The Value of Shear Wave Sono Elastography in Characterization of Breast Lesions in Correlation with Histopathology

Background: Elastography is an imaging tool that works in conjunction with conventional B-mode ultrasound to provide additional information on the stiffness of the tissues and improve the diagnosis of breast cancer. It can also reduce the number of true cut biopsies for suspicious breast lesions.
Objective: This study aims to assess whether addingshear wave elastography (SWE) to B-mode US is a useful adjunct for better characterization of suspicious breast lesions and lowering the number of unnecessary breast biopsies.
Patients and method: This is considered a prospective study of seventy-three ladies complaining of suspicious breast lesions categorized as BIRAD III and more between December 2020 and January 2022.SWE was used to assess the breast lesions' elastography measures and compare them with histopathology results.
Results: SWE gives excellent discriminative ability with an area under the curve ( UAC ) of 0.862; the Sensitivity was 100%, and the specificity was 77.5%.
Conclusion: Shear wave elastography (SWE) is a noninvasive tool that can differentiate benign and malignant lesions. Most false positive results were granulomatous mastitis; lesions with thick inspissated secretions also show high elastography values.