Analysis of eighty-one cases with breast lesions using automated breast volume scanner and comparison with handheld ultrasound

Objectives: This study aims to evaluate the clinical utility of automated breast volume scanner (ABVS) against handheld ultrasound in detecting and diagnosing breast lesions.

Methods: Eighty-one patients were subjected to both automated breast volume scanner and handheld ultrasound examination in the supine position. The number of lesions detected and the average scanning time (both device-specific and user-specific) for each device were compared. The diagnostic accuracy, sensitivity and specificity were calculated for each method. The maximum diameters of the lesions based on handheld ultrasound and ABVS were compared with the final pathological sizes.

Results: Of the 81 patients, both automated breast volume scanner and handheld ultrasound detected 95 breast lesions. Compared with the pathological diagnosis in 35 lesions, both ABVS and handheld ultrasound exhibited high sensitivity (both 100%) and high specificity (95.0%, and 85.0%, respectively). In addition, ABVS had a higher diagnostic accuracy (97.1%) than handheld ultrasound (91.4%) for breast neoplasms. More importantly, ABVS was capable of displaying the retraction phenomenon in coronal plane. All the invasive ductal carcinomas (12 lesions) presented the retraction phenomenon. In contrast, intraductal carcinomas (3 lesions) and benign lesions did not display such features. Thus, retraction phenomenon had a high specificity (100.0%) and high sensitivity (80.0%) in detecting breast cancer while it also had high accuracy (91.4%) in determining malignant from benign lesions. There was no significant difference in maximum diameters of pathology, 2D and ABVS (p>0.05), however the correlation coefficient revealed that ABVS had better correlation with pathology (r=0.616) than 2D (r=0.468). The user scanning time for the ABVS demonstrated no difference between two examiners (11.7 ± 1.3 min and 12.1 ± 1.4 min; p>0.05). However, device-specific scanning time was longer for ABVS than handheld ultrasound (11.9 ± 1.4 min vs. 6.8 ± 1.1 min, respectively; p<0.01).

Conclusions: Automated breast volume scanner provides advantages of high diagnostic accuracy, better lesion size prediction, operator-independence and visualization of the whole breast. It is a promising modality in breast imaging.