Diagnostic value of an automated breast volume scanner compared with a hand-held ultrasound: a meta-analysis

Abstract

Background: The diagnostic performance of an automated breast volume scanner (ABVS) compared with that of a hand-held ultrasound (HHUS) for breast cancer remains unclear. We performed a meta-analysis to compare the diagnostic performances of the ABVS and HHUS for breast cancer.Methods: We searched PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane, and SinoMed databases to identify eligible studies up until November 14, 2018. Studies comparing ABVS and HHUS for differentiating benign and malignant breast tumors were included. A meta-analysis was performed to generate pooled diagnostic accuracy parameters [sensitivity, specificity, diagnostic odds ratio (DOR), area under the curve (AUC), and the Q* index] and detection rates for ABVS and HHUS.Results: Nine studies involving 1,376 patients and 1,527 lesions were included in the meta-analysis for diagnostic accuracy. The pooled sensitivity was 0.93 [95% confidence interval (CI), 0.91-0.95] for ABVS and 0.90 (95% CI, 0.88-0.92) for HHUS, and the pooled specificity was 0.86 (95% CI, 0.83-0.88) for ABVS and 0.82 (95% CI, 0.79-0.84) for HHUS. The pooled DOR was 88.66 (95% CI, 51.44-152.78) for ABVS and 41.06 for HHUS (95% CI, 26.58-63.42). The AUC of the summary receiver operating characteristic (SROC) was 0.9496 for ABVS and 0.9143 for HHUS, and the Q* index was 0.8899 for ABVS and 0.8469 for HHUS.Meta-regression showed no significant difference between the diagnostic accuracy of ABVS and HHUS (P=0.0771). No publication bias was found. Thirteen published studies involving 1,047 pathologically confirmed malignant lesions were included to generate a pooled detection rate. The pooled detection rate was 1.00 (95% CI, 1.00-1.00) for both ABVS and HHUS, for which a publication bias was found.Conclusions: ABVS can be used as an appropriate screening tool for breast cancer as well as HHUS in diagnostic accuracy and detection rate. Considering other advantages of ABVS including non-radioactivity, sensitivity to dense breast, three-dimensional reconstruction, time-saving and repeatability, it might be a promising screening tool for young or dense-breast women in the future.

Diagnostic performance of combined use of automated breast volume scanning & hand-held ultrasound for breast lesions

“…Our study showed that the sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, PPV and NPV of ABVS were slightly higher than HHUS. This finding was similar to previous studies 21 22 23 24 . ABVS can be more complete than HHUS for evaluating breast lesions because ABVS could improve breast lesion analysis by the additional coronal-plane imaging which provides for a better observation of lesion margin and each sectional plane of the saved volume can be visualized avoiding non-standardized documentation 25 .…”

Evaluation of Computer-Aided Detection (CAD) in Screening Automated Breast Ultrasound Based on Characteristics of CAD Marks and False-Positive Marks

“…Several studies have reported that the performance of ABUS was comparable to that of hand-held ultrasound [20][21][22]. In addition, four prospective studies using ABUS demonstrated an increased cancer detection of 1.9-7.7 per 1000 examinations similar to hand-held ultrasound [10,11,14,23].…”

Efficiency And Impact Factors of Anatomical Intelligence For Breast And Hand-Held Ultrasound In Lesion Screening: A Pilot Study

“…According to Lin X et al's study [6], the detection rate is up to 96%, but that of Niu L et al's [20] claims it is only 82%. A metaanalysis by Zhang X et al [21] revealed that HHUS produces a 90% rate with a large deviation that is closely related to the operator's diagnostic experience. In this study, we found that the AI-breast ultrasound reported a higher breast lesions rate than that conducted by general radiologists.…”