Background: Tissue elasticity imaging technology is expected to be a new modality for breast diagnosis, based on hardness as a tissue characteristic that is affected by tissue disease such as cancer.
Aim: To assess the value of sonoelastography in the differential diagnosis of breast lesions.
Patients and method: We included in this prospective study 59 patients diagnosed with breast lesions between January 2009 and January 2010. All the patients were examined in the supine position and the B mode ultrasound image was displayed alongside the elastography strain image. An EUS Hitachi EUB 8500 ultrasound system with an embedded elastography module (Hitachi Medical Systems Europe Holding AG, Zug, Switzerland) and a 6.5-MHz linear probe was used to obtain the B mode and elastography strain images. The elastography strain images were scored according to the Tsukuba elasticity score.
Results: For assessment of sonoelastography role in differential diagnosis of breast lesions, we performed ROC analysis, and we obtained a sensitivity of 89.7%, and a specificity of 92.9% (area under the ROC curve = 0.924, 95% CI = 0.822–0.977 and p = 0.0001).
Conclusions: Elastography is a fast, simple method which can complement the conventional US. Elastography is promising, and with future improvements in the technology, this imaging modality will become an invaluable tool for the diagnosis of breast diseases in the clinical setting.