A malignant breast carcinoma size assessment using multiple orientation axial, lateral, and shear elastographies: The second stage of a pilot study

Abstract

Elastography is the imaging modality focusing on detection of stiffness variation within inhomogeneous soft tissue. We extended a conventional 2D axial radio frequency (RF) spline correlation based elastography method to multiple orientations, and strengthened its power by equipping it with shear-direction gradient options. This algorithm enhancement explained the elastography from multiple dimensions along lateral and angular orientations, and thus improved its capability in distinguishing tumours from their surrounding desmoplastic fibres. 26 breast cancer cases, from 24 out of 83 recruited patients in our previous study, were re-evaluated, and few Phantom cases were introduced to describe the foundation of the proposed method as benchmarks. Results obtained using the new technique showed strong improvement over the previous method on tumour sensitivity, specificity, fibre recognition and boundary size assessment accuracy. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.