The Application Of Real-time Gray Scale Contrast-Enhanced Ultrasonography In Differentiation Of Focal Breast Lesions

Objective: To investigate the imaging characteristics and clinical value of real time gray scale contrast enhanced ultrasonography(CEUS) in differentiation of focal breast lesions.Methods: Forty-three focal breast lesions in thirty-six patients .were examined by CEUS with CnTI mode and SonoVue. The results of CEUS were compared with those of conventional ultrasound, three-dimensional ultrasound and pathology. Results: Three patterns of enhancement were observed according to dynamic enhanced model in the results of CEUS: no enhancement, peripheral net enhancement and intratumoral enhancement. The benign lesions were mostly shown as the pattern of no enhancement and peripheral net enhancememt (25/29), and the malignant lesions were mostly shown as the pattern of intratumoral enhancement (11/14). Three types of the time-intensity curve were observed: quick up and slow down multi-peak, . slow up and quick down , slow up and quick down low-platform type.The benign lesions were mostly shown as slow up and quick down type or slow up and quick down low-platform type(26/29). .The malignant lesions were mostly shown as quick up and slow down multi-peak type(13/14). The accuracy of CEUS for diagnosing focal breast lesions(90.7%) was higher than that of conventional ultrasound (81.4%), (p>0.05).The sensitivity, speciality, positive predictive value and negative predictive value of CEUS for diagnosing breast focal lesions were 92.8 %, 89.6%, 81.3% and 96.3% respectively.Conclusions: It is concluded that benign and malignant breast lesions have their own imaging characteristics of CEUS and time-intensity curve. CEUS is very important in differentiation of focal breast lesions owing to its high accuracy.