Role of Shear Wave Elastography in Characterization of Breast Masses Using Histopathology as Gold Standard

Abstract

Background: More recent ultrasound technique like SWE have led to better degrees of breast mass characterization by estimating tissue stiffness based on the acoustically generated shear wave propagation speed through the tissue. To nd out the sensitivity and Aims and Objectives: specicity of shear wave elastography in characterizing palpable breast masses using histopathology as gold standard. Materials and methods: This prospective, cross-sectional study was from may 2020 to June 2021. All patients underwent B-mode ultrasound, SWE and USG guided core biopsy of breast mass, BI-RADS on USG with modications by SWE assigned, cut-off values for qualitative and quantitative variables of SWE for differentiation between benign and malignant masses were estimated. SWE ndings were corelated with histopathology. Results: On histopathology amongst 55 patients 27 (49%) were benign and 28 (51%) were malignant. On USG, 19 were BI-RADS3 and 36 were BI-RADS 4 (4a, n = 18; 4b, n = 14; 4c, n = 4) leading to 78.57% sensitivity and 48.15% specicity. On modied BI-RADS' using E-color and Emean/E-max, specicity improved to 66.67% and 77.78% respectively. Addition of SWE to ul Conclusion: trasound improves characterization of BI-RADS 3 and 4a masses. E-max, E-mean and E-color are the most useful SWE parameters to differentiate between malignant and benign breast masses