IMPACT OF ULTRASOUND ELASTOGRAPHY, IN THE DIAGNOSIS OF SOLID BREAST LESIONS

Abstract

Breast cancer is a major health problem that warranted efforts to be paid in order to increase the diagnostic capability of the routinely used diagnostic aids. Ultrasound elastography is one of the newly introduced ultrasound built-in software that could increase the diagnostic capability of conventional ultrasound based on the fact that breast cancer is usually harder than benign breast lesions. The routinely used method for classification of breast lesions according to tissue elasticity is the color coding as well as the strain ratio methods. Ultrasound elastography, does not only have a confirmatory diagnostic tool with sono-mammography, but also can be a beneficial technique by which ultrasound BIRADS downgrading of benign lesions could be elicited, thus reducing the number of unnecessary breast biopsies, and consequently improve the patients compliance . However, ultrasound elastography has some limitations, such as operator dependency, inter, intraobserver variability, and results variability according to the internal structure of lesion being evaluated. So the cases should be evaluated as a whole regarding the history, clinical data, sonomammographic findings, and ultrasound elastographic evaluation to attain the best diagnostic results, and to avoid false positive, and negative diagnoses. Key words: Breast Lesions –Conventional Ultrasound – Ultrasound Elastography –Strain Ratio.