Keywords:
Breast, Ultrasound physics, Oncology, Ultrasound, Elastography, Screening, Imaging sequences, Cancer
Authors:
G. A. G. M. Hendriks, C. Chen, H. H. G. Hansen, C. L. de Korte; Nijmegen/NL
DOI:
10.26044/ecr2019/C-1887
Methods and materials
This study was approved by the local institutional ethical committee (CMO Radboudumc,
project number CMO 2016-2692).
(A)symptomatic patients were recruited between July 2017 and October 2018 and gave written informed consent in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.
The inclusion criteria were adult women (18 years and older) who were scheduled for a mammogram or ultrasound breast exam at Radboudumc (Nijmegen,
the Netherlands) for breast cancer screening or after being referred by their healthcare professional.
Volumetric ultrasound radio-frequency datasets were acquired by the ABVS (Acuson S2000,
Siemens Healthineers,
Issaquah,
WA) before and after automated transducer lifting (2 mm) and were used to calculate displacements and principal strains by a block-matching algorithm and least-squares strain estimator,
respectively [4-6].
This protocol is summarized in Figure 2.
To quantify strain,
lesions were annotated and strain ratios calculated using strain in the subcutaneous fat layer as reference.
Lesion classification was based on regular breast exams and biopsy results.