Utility of whole breast ultrasound and digital tomosynthesis as an adjunct with mammography in dense breast to detect breast lesions

Abstract

Mammography has been widely adopted as the primary screening tool in breast cancer detection and assessment. Screening in dense breast makes it difficult to detect lesions on screening and lowers its sensitivity to detect small lesions. Sensitivity and specificity improves with use of digital breast tomosynthesis and whole breast ultrasound in detecting lesions and also in differentiating benign and malignant breast lesions. Breast ultrasound and DBT have shown equivocal significance in detecting breast lesion on screening in the present study. The aim of the study was to evaluate utility of whole breast ultrasound and digital tomosynthesis as an adjunct with mammography in dense breast to detect breast lesions.

Characterisation of breast lesions: comparison of digital breast tomosynthesis and ultrasonography

“…13 Another study by Yadav et al conducted in 164 females also reported similar results and concluded that breast ultrasound and digital breast tomosynthesis had shown equivocal significance in identifying breast lesion upon screening. 14 As seen in the study, there are special cases in which the lesion has typical suspicious characteristics but turn out to be having benign infectious or inflammatory etiology like acute or chronic mastitis, sclerosing mastitis or abscess. These lesions have not been included in final calculations as that can lead to falsely low demographical indices.…”