The value of strain rate ratio of elastography in the diagnosis of benign and malignant BI-RADS-US 3-4 breast masses

Abstract

Current study aims to investigate the value of strain rate ratio (SR) of elastography in the diagnosis of benign and malignant breast masses of BI-RADS-US 3-4. The ultrasonographic data of 1099 breast masses that had undergone elastography and pathological examination were retrospectively analyzed by non-parametric test, consistency analysis and ROC curve sequentially. The diagnostic efficacy of SR method in different BI-RADS classification of breast lesions was evaluated by ROC curve. The maximum Youden index obtained from the ROC curve was 0.845. When the cut-off value was 3.57, the diagnostic sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, positive predictive value and negative predictive value of SR value in benign and malignant breast lesions were 85.7 %, 98.8 %, 93.6 %, 97.9 % and 91.45 %, respectively. Consistency analysis showed that the consistency between SR value and pathological diagnosis was 93.6 % (κ = 0.864). In addition, the SR values between benign and malignant lesions of BI-RADS 3 and 4 were statistically different (P < 0.001). ROC analysis showed that the diagnostic AUC of SR value in BI-RADS 3, 4a, 4b and 4c lesions was 0.985, 0.866, 0.793 and 0.916, respectively. In addition, there were 58 cases of missed diagnosis and 20 cases of misdiagnosis in the diagnosis of benign and malignant breast lesions. The elastic strain rate ratio method has a good diagnostic value for the evaluation of breast masses, especially for lesions with a score of 3-4. The elastic strain rate ratio method is helpful to improve the accuracy of diagnosis.