Elastography may lower the need for breast biopsies

Lead researcher Stamatia Destounis, a diagnostic radiologist at Elizabeth Wende Breast Care in Rochester, N.Y., stated, "There's a lot of room to improve specificity with ultrasound, and elastography can help us do that. It's an easy way to eliminate needle biopsy for something that's probably benign."

According to scientists, cancerous tumors have very low elasticity hence they do not change shape readily when pressed.

Elastography combined with the additional compression of the ultrasound device against the breast helps to distinguish hard, inflexible lumps which are generally malignant from the more flexible lumps which are typically benign.

Destounis explained, "You can perform elastography at the same time as handheld ultrasound and view the images on a split screen, with the two-dimensional ultrasound image on the left and the elastography image on the right.”

Study details
The scientists conducted a study called ‘The Role of Elasticity Imaging’ (EI) in a Large Community-based Breast Imaging Center.

As a part of the research, 179 patients ranging from 18 to 92 years of age, consented to undergo EI at the time of breast ultrasound. Biopsies were performed on 134 solid breast lesions that were detected.

Observations by researchers
The researchers found that the process of EI was effective in properly identifying 98 percent of the malignant lesions and 82 percent of the benign lumps.

In addition, elastography was found to be more precise in measuring the size of the lesions than ultrasound.

"The specificity is not as good as it was for the cancerous lesions," Destounis said.

Potential of elastography
The surgery involved with biopsies is costly and involves certain risks. The researches state that elastography is a diagnostic test that has the potential to reduce unnecessary breast biopsies after suspicious findings in mammograms.

Destounis added, "With more research elastography could impact decisions to not perform biopsy in patients [who don't need it]."

Findings from the ongoing study have not been published but were presented at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America in Chicago.