Ultrasound super-resolution imaging for differential diagnosis of breast masses

Ge Zhang; Yu-Meng Lei; Nan Li; Jing Yu; Xian-Yang Jiang; Mei-Hui Yu; Hai-Man Hu; Shu-E Zeng; Xin-Wu Cui; Hua-Rong Ye

doi:10.3389/fonc.2022.1049991

Ultrasound super-resolution imaging for differential diagnosis of breast masses

Front Oncol. 2022 Nov 3:12:1049991. doi: 10.3389/fonc.2022.1049991. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Ge Zhang^{1

2}, Yu-Meng Lei¹, Nan Li¹, Jing Yu¹, Xian-Yang Jiang¹, Mei-Hui Yu¹, Hai-Man Hu³, Shu-E Zeng⁴, Xin-Wu Cui⁵, Hua-Rong Ye¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Medical Ultrasound, China Resources & Wisco General Hospital, Wuhan University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China.
² Hubei Province Key Laboratory of Occupational Hazard Identification and Control, Wuhan University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China.
³ Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Hubei University of Technology, Wuhan, China.
⁴ Department of Medical Ultrasound, Hubei Cancer Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China.
⁵ Department of Medical Ultrasound, Tongji Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China.

Abstract

Objective: Ultrasound imaging has been widely used in breast cancer screening. Recently, ultrasound super-resolution imaging (SRI) has shown the capability to break the diffraction limit to display microvasculature. However, the application of SRI on differential diagnosis of breast masses remains unknown. Therefore, this study aims to evaluate the feasibility and clinical value of SRI for visualizing microvasculature and differential diagnosis of breast masses.

Methods: B mode, color-Doppler flow imaging (CDFI) and contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) images of 46 patients were collected respectively. SRI were generated by localizations of each possible contrast signals. Micro-vessel density (MVD) and microvascular flow rate (MFR) were calculated from SRI and time to peak (TTP), peak intensity (PI) and area under the curve (AUC) were obtained by quantitative analysis of CEUS images respectively. Pathological results were considered as the gold standard. Independent chi-square test and multivariate logistic regression analysis were performed using these parameters to examine the correlation.

Results: The results showed that SRI technique could be successfully applied on breast masses and display microvasculature at a significantly higher resolution than the conventional CDFI and CEUS images. The results showed that the PI, AUC, MVD and MFR of malignant breast masses were significantly higher than those of benign breast masses, while TTP was significantly lower than that of benign breast masses. Among all five parameters, MVD showed the highest positive correlation with the malignancy of breast masses.

Conclusions: SRI is able to successfully display the microvasculature of breast masses. Compared with CDFI and CEUS, SRI can provide additional morphological and functional information for breast masses. MVD has a great potential in assisting the differential diagnosis of breast masses as an important imaging marker.

Keywords: breast mass; contrast-enhanced ultrasound; differential diagnosis; super-resolution imaging; ultrasound.