Whole-Breast Ultrasound for Breast Screening and Archiving

Chiun-Sheng Huang; Ya-Wen Yang; Rong-Tai Chen; Chung-Ming Lo; Chao Lo; Ching-Fen Cheng; Chao-Shuan Lee; Ruey-Feng Chang

doi:10.1016/j.ultrasmedbio.2017.01.009

Whole-Breast Ultrasound for Breast Screening and Archiving

Ultrasound Med Biol. 2017 May;43(5):926-933. doi: 10.1016/j.ultrasmedbio.2017.01.009. Epub 2017 Mar 7.

Authors

Chiun-Sheng Huang¹, Ya-Wen Yang¹, Rong-Tai Chen², Chung-Ming Lo³, Chao Lo¹, Ching-Fen Cheng¹, Chao-Shuan Lee², Ruey-Feng Chang⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Surgery, National Taiwan University and National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan.
² Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan.
³ Graduate Institute of Biomedical Informatics, Taipei Medical University, Taipei, Taiwan.
⁴ Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan. Electronic address: rfchang@csie.ntu.edu.tw.

PMID: 28283326
DOI: 10.1016/j.ultrasmedbio.2017.01.009

Abstract

The incidence of breast cancer is increasing worldwide, reinforcing the importance of breast screening. Conventional hand-held ultrasound (HHUS) for breast screening is efficient and relatively easy to perform; however, it lacks systematic recording and localization. This study investigated an electromagnetic tracking-based whole-breast ultrasound (WBUS) system to facilitate the use of HHUS for breast screening. One-hundred nine breast masses were collected, and the detection of suspicious breast lesions was compared between the WBUS system, HHUS and a commercial automated breast ultrasound (ABUS) system. The positioning error between WBUS and ABUS (1.39 ± 0.68 cm) was significantly smaller than that between HHUS and ABUS (1.62 ± 0.91 cm, p = 0.014) and HHUS and WBUS (1.63 ± 0.9 cm, p = 0.024). WBUS is a practical clinical tool for breast screening that can be used instead of the often unavailable and costly ABUS.

Keywords: Automated breast ultrasound; Breast mass; Comparative study; Computer-aided tracking system; Hand-held ultrasound; Whole-breast ultrasound.

MeSH terms

Breast / diagnostic imaging
Breast Neoplasms / diagnostic imaging*
Female
Humans
Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / methods*
Middle Aged
Pattern Recognition, Automated / methods*
Reproducibility of Results
Sensitivity and Specificity
Ultrasonography, Mammary / methods*