Abstract
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the diagnostic performance of automated breast ultrasound(ABUS)for breast diseases as compared to hand-held breast ultrasound(HHUS).
Materials and Methods: A multicenter study was conducted on 496 subjects recruited from 6 hospitals between January 2018 and August 2019. All women underwent both ABUS and HHUS and the images were interpreted by 9 doctors using the guideline published by the Japan Association of Breast and Thyroid Sonology for judging the diagnostic category. Each case was interpreted by 3doctors and none of the doctors interpreted both ABUS and HHUS images from the same cases. Lesions judged as category 4 or over were counted as suspicious lesions, and lesions judged as category 3a or over were counted as detected lesions.
Results: There cases comprised 235 malignant and 261 non-malignant cases. The overall diagnostic sensitivities of ABUS and HHUS were 54.3% and 78.5%, and the diagnostic specificities were 87.1% and 81.2%, respectively. Thus, while HHUS had a higher sensitivity（p<0.01), ABUS had higher specificity (p=0.002). On ROC analysis the AUCs for ABUS and HHUS were 0.755 and 0.862，respectively, being larger for HHUS (p<0.01). As for the detectability of malignancies by any of the 3doctors, the sensitivities of ABUS and HHUS were 91.1% and 99.1%, and the specificities were 26.4% and 23.4%, respectively; thus, the sensitivity of HHUS was higher(p<0.01).
Conclusion: ABUS showed inferior sensitivity to HHUS in which targeted images were obtained under the clinical information.
