Digital breast tomosynthesis improves diagnostic accuracy of breast microcalcifications

Abstract

DBT reconstructs high‐resolution tomographic images through multi‐angle scanning. We aimed at investigating the diagnostic value of DBT in breast microcalcifications of Asian women. The clinical characteristics and diagnostic accuracy of FFDM and DBT in 70 breast cancer patients were compared. 52 malignant lesions and 24 benign lesions were found in 76 breast microcalcifications. FFDM presented with high sensitivity and low specificity of 94.2% and 45.8%, while DBT presented with high sensitivity and medium specificity of 96.1% and 62.5%. The positive predictive value, negative predictive value, and diagnostic coincidence rate of DBT were higher than those of FFDM (84.7%, 88.2%, 85.5% vs. 79.0%, 78.5%, 78.9%, respectively). The AUC of DBT was significantly higher than that of FFDM (Z = 2.322, P = 0.020), at 0.700 ± 0.055 [0.584‐0.800] and 0.793 ± 0.052 [0.685‐0.878], respectively. Thus, we concluded that DBT improves the diagnostic accuracy and detection rate of microcalcifications in Asian women.