Elastography useful for breast cancer screening in microcalcification cases: Study
Istanbul, Turkey: Shear-wave elastography (SWE) is a useful method for characterizing suspicious microcalcifications (MCs) in women undergoing breast cancer screening, finds a recent study. This would help in making a decision on whether the patient should receive a second biopsy or excision.
The findings of the study are published in the journal Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology.
"Despite biopsy being recommended for showing suspicious microcalcifications, 2D shear-wave elastography is a "useful" method for characterizing microcalcifications that can be visualized with ultrasonography (USG)," wrote the authors.
Yasemin Kayadibi, Istanbul Universitesi-Cerrahpasa, Kocamustafapasa, Istanbul, Turkey, and colleagues aimed to investigate the correlations between the findings of two-dimensional shear-wave elastography and the histopathologic results of microcalcifications visualized using ultrasonography.
For this purpose, the researchers evaluated five people with suspicious MCs without accompanying mass. They underwent USG and 2D-SWE before USG-guided tru-cut biopsy. They then compared SWE values and histopathologic features statistically. Using the Mann–Whitney U test, the variables between groups were analyzed. Receiver operating characteristic analysis was performed and cut-off values determined to discriminate malignancy, invasiveness and high grade.
Key findings of the study include:
- Pathology confirmed 27 malignant lesions (18 invasive ductal carcinomas, one invasive lobular and eight ductal carcinomas in situ) and 23 benign ones.
- There was a statistically significant difference between the SWE values of malignant and benign MCs.
- The diagnostic performance of SWE for malignancy, invasiveness and high grade were as follows, repectively: sensitivity (93%, 83%, 88%), specificity (91%, 88%, 53%), positive predictive value (93%, 94%, 44%), negative predictive value (91%, 70%, 90%) and area under the curve (0.952, 0.885, 0.776).
- Cut-off values were determined as 57 kPa for malignancy, 124 kPa for invasiveness and 124.5 kPa for high grade.
"Our findings show that SWE is a useful method in clinical practice for characterizing MCs that can be visualized with USG," concluded the authors.
Reference:
The study titled, "Characterization of Suspicious Microcalcifications on Mammography Using 2D Shear-Wave Elastography," is published in the journal Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology.
DOI: https://www.umbjournal.org/article/S0301-5629(21)00219-2/fulltext
