Role of Ultrasound Strain Elastography for the Evaluation of Breast Lesions

Abstract

Introduction: Ultrasound (US) elastography is an emerging technique that can be used during breast US examination. Guidelines recommend mammographic screening and US for diagnosis of breast cancer. The specificity of these techniques is not high enough to prevent unnecessary biopsies. Hence there is need for a more specific technique to overcome this problem. This study aimed to evaluate the value of strain elastography (SE) for breast lesions. Materials and Methods: In this cross sectional observational study over 18 months, 60 women with palpable breast lumps were evaluated with conventional US and SE. Results obtained were correlated with histopathological findings for statistical analysis. Result: A statistically significant correlation was found between SE and histopathological outcome with a p value of 0.03(<0.05). The positive predictive value (PPV) was 76.92% and the negative predictive value (NPV) was 76.47% with Chi square= 8.4. Conclusion: Ultrasound with SE can substantially improve the possibility of differentiating benign from malignant breast lesions thereby limiting recourse to biopsy and considerably reducing the number of benign breast biopsy diagnoses.