Combined ultrasound, MRI characterizes nonmass-like breast lesions

Combining ultrasound with MRI could help better differentiate between benign and malignant breast nonmass-like lesions initially detected on ultrasound, a study published October 12 in Ultrasound in Medicine & Biology found. Researchers led by Rui-Lan Niu, PhD, from the Chinese PLA General Hospital in Beijing, China, found that their combined method led to improved performance in this area over each modality alone. “The study determined that the integrated diagnostic strategy had good performance in the diagnosis of nonmass-like lesions, which can improve diagnostic specificity while maintaining high sensitivity,” Niu and co-authors wrote. Some breast lesions do not meet the threshold for being classified as a mass. These are defined as nonmass-like lesions, which are areas of altered echotexture that differ from the surrounding breast tissue and do not conform to a mass shape. Differentiating between benign and malignant lesions in this area is important since various breast diseases can present as nonmass-like lesions. Ultrasound and MRI have their tradeoffs in supplemental breast imaging. The researchers noted that many unnecessary biopsies of nonmass-like lesions are performed due to overlapping sonographic features of benign and malignant lesions, along with a lack of sonographic description and assessment in BI-RADS ultrasound. MRI, meanwhile, has high sensitivity but low specificity, which means BI-RADS 4 lesions may be subject to unnecessary biopsy.  The Niu ...
Source: AuntMinnie.com Headlines - Category: Radiology Authors: Tags: Clinical News Womens Imaging Breast Source Type: news