"Automatic Breast Ultrasound Useful for Diagnosing Early Breast Cancer Transition"
Sep 22, 2024
A research team led by Kim Sun-mi, a professor of radiology at Seoul National University Bundang Hospital, announced that automatic breast ultrasound, a breast cancer diagnostic test, can be used as a useful test for diagnosing armpit (liquid) lymph node metastasis of breast cancer.
Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women in Korea, and according to national cancer registration statistics in 2021, about 21.5% of new female cancer patients were diagnosed with breast cancer. Since the prognosis is good enough to have a 5-year survival rate of breast cancer reaching 93.8%, it is important to detect and treat it early through regular checkups. Breast cancer screening is performed with mammography (baby breast X-ray) as a standard test, and breast ultrasound is performed together if necessary for accurate confirmation.
Recently, 'automatic breast ultrasound' examination has been widely used, and it has the advantage of being able to standardize examination by photographing the entire breast with examination equipment designed to fit the structure of the breast. In particular, unlike manual breast ultrasound, automatic breast ultrasound can minimize problems in which results vary depending on skill level and can save test time, making it an alternative test for manual breast ultrasound.
Early breast cancer refers to a condition in which cancer is found only in the breast or armpit lymph nodes and has not spread to other body parts. Armpit lymph node metastasis is one of the important indicators of progression of breast cancer, and an accurate diagnosis is essential. However, due to the nature of the equipment, automatic breast ultrasound has a limitation in that it includes only a part of the armpit, so there was an inconvenience of having to perform additional manual breast ultrasound to confirm armpit lymph node metastasis.
Accordingly, Professor Kim Sun-mi's research team conducted a study to find out whether it was possible to diagnose armpit lymph node metastasis of breast cancer through automatic breast ultrasound. The research team compared the results of automatic and manual breast ultrasound of the armpits of 377 patients diagnosed with early breast cancer with biopsy results to evaluate the diagnostic performance of predicting severe metastasis with three or more armpit lymph nodes with metastatic cancer cells.
As a result, the sensitivity and specificity of automatic mammography predicting armpit lymph node metastasis were 43.6% and 95.1%, respectively, and there was no significant difference from manual mammography (41.6% and 95.1%). Sensitivity refers to the probability of diagnosing 'There is a disease' in the presence of a disease, and specificity refers to the probability of diagnosing 'There is no disease' in the absence of a disease.
Even if the cancer cell metastasizes to more than three armpit lymph nodes, the sensitivity is 70% and the specificity is 89.6%, which is similar to manual breast ultrasound (66.7% and 88.9%). In addition, the matching rate of diagnostic performance between the two automatic and manual mammograms was high at 95.9%, confirming that automatic mammograms can also evaluate parts of the armpit at a level similar to that of manual mammograms.
Professor Kim Sun-mi said "Through the results of this study, it is expected that automatic breast ultrasound can be used as a useful test for early breast cancer metastasis diagnosis.""If a partial but automatic mammogram shows suspicious metastasis to the armpit area, it is recommended to consider a biopsy and examine the entire armpit area through manual mammography. "
Meanwhile, this paper was published in the official international academic journal of the Korean Society of Radiology 'Korean Journal of Radiology'.
Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women in Korea, and according to national cancer registration statistics in 2021, about 21.5% of new female cancer patients were diagnosed with breast cancer. Since the prognosis is good enough to have a 5-year survival rate of breast cancer reaching 93.8%, it is important to detect and treat it early through regular checkups. Breast cancer screening is performed with mammography (baby breast X-ray) as a standard test, and breast ultrasound is performed together if necessary for accurate confirmation.
Recently, 'automatic breast ultrasound' examination has been widely used, and it has the advantage of being able to standardize examination by photographing the entire breast with examination equipment designed to fit the structure of the breast. In particular, unlike manual breast ultrasound, automatic breast ultrasound can minimize problems in which results vary depending on skill level and can save test time, making it an alternative test for manual breast ultrasound.
Early breast cancer refers to a condition in which cancer is found only in the breast or armpit lymph nodes and has not spread to other body parts. Armpit lymph node metastasis is one of the important indicators of progression of breast cancer, and an accurate diagnosis is essential. However, due to the nature of the equipment, automatic breast ultrasound has a limitation in that it includes only a part of the armpit, so there was an inconvenience of having to perform additional manual breast ultrasound to confirm armpit lymph node metastasis.
Accordingly, Professor Kim Sun-mi's research team conducted a study to find out whether it was possible to diagnose armpit lymph node metastasis of breast cancer through automatic breast ultrasound. The research team compared the results of automatic and manual breast ultrasound of the armpits of 377 patients diagnosed with early breast cancer with biopsy results to evaluate the diagnostic performance of predicting severe metastasis with three or more armpit lymph nodes with metastatic cancer cells.
As a result, the sensitivity and specificity of automatic mammography predicting armpit lymph node metastasis were 43.6% and 95.1%, respectively, and there was no significant difference from manual mammography (41.6% and 95.1%). Sensitivity refers to the probability of diagnosing 'There is a disease' in the presence of a disease, and specificity refers to the probability of diagnosing 'There is no disease' in the absence of a disease.
Even if the cancer cell metastasizes to more than three armpit lymph nodes, the sensitivity is 70% and the specificity is 89.6%, which is similar to manual breast ultrasound (66.7% and 88.9%). In addition, the matching rate of diagnostic performance between the two automatic and manual mammograms was high at 95.9%, confirming that automatic mammograms can also evaluate parts of the armpit at a level similar to that of manual mammograms.
Professor Kim Sun-mi said "Through the results of this study, it is expected that automatic breast ultrasound can be used as a useful test for early breast cancer metastasis diagnosis.""If a partial but automatic mammogram shows suspicious metastasis to the armpit area, it is recommended to consider a biopsy and examine the entire armpit area through manual mammography. "
Meanwhile, this paper was published in the official international academic journal of the Korean Society of Radiology 'Korean Journal of Radiology'.
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