Latest Expert Witness News
Breast imaging software helps target cancers
A software program that helps determine the stiffness of a breast lump may help some women avoid unnecessary breast biopsies, U.S. researchers said on Monday.
They said the technique called elastography, which is used in tandem with a standard ultrasound scan, correctly identified 98 percent of cancers in women who had an ultrasound to evaluate a suspicious lump in their breast.
It also correctly ruled out breast cancer in 78 percent of women whose lumps were later found to be harmless, Dr. Stamatia Destounis of Elizabeth Wende Breast Care in Rochester, New York told reporters at the Radiological Society of North America meeting in Chicago USA.
That might help ease some of the concerns about routine mammography screening, which can result in excess biopsies, especially in women who get regular mammograms starting at age 40.
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force earlier this month recommended against routine breast mammograms for women in their 40s to spare them from some of the worry and expense of extra tests to distinguish between cancer and harmless lumps. About 80 percent of breast biopsies find harmless or benign lumps.
Often, when a mammogram turns up a suspicious spot, women get a breast ultrasound, which uses sound waves to create pictures of internal structures of the breast.
Many ultrasound machines have elastography software, which can also measure the stiffness of a breast lump.
Her team has been studying the effectiveness of elastograms compared to regular ultrasounds. So far, they have studied 193 women aged 18 to 92 with a total of 198 lesions.
They did routine mammograms and compared the size of the tumors with the elastogram images done using ultrasound equipment and elastogram software from Siemens AG. Some 58 breast lesions did not require a biopsy.
Of the 140 biopsies, 59 revealed cancers. When they checked the result with the elastogram prediction, they found it was 98 percent accurate at identifying cancers.
back