The Size Differences of Breast Cancer and Benign Tumors Measured by Two-Dimensional Ultrasound and Contrast-Enhanced Ultrasound.

Abstract

Ultrasound (US) imaging has been observed to underestimate tumor size in clinical practice. This study aims to compare the size measurements of breast cancer and benign tumors using two-dimensional ultrasound (2DUS) and contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS). The study included 42 clinically confirmed breast cancer and 47 benign breast tumors. Two experienced physicians independently measured the maximal longitudinal and transverse diameters of the masses in 2DUS and CEUS. All analyses were performed in R (4.2.2) and GraphPad Prism 6. The maximal longitudinal and transverse diameters of breast cancer measured by CEUS were 26.61 ± 0.21% and 26.24 ± 0.19% larger compared with 2DUS, and benign breast tumors had an 11.74 ± 0.21% and 11.06 ± 0.14% increase in size compared with 2DUS. The area under the curve (AUC) of the receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) for the difference between 2DUS and CEUS was 0.870 for longitudinal diameters (95% CI: 0.795-0.945, sensitivity 0.842, specificity 0.783, threshold value 0.215), and 0.863 for transverse diameters (95% CI: 0.785-0.942, sensitivity 0.667, specificity 0.936, threshold value 0.203). The size measurements of both breast cancer and benign tumors were larger in CEUS compared with 2DUS, with CEUS measurements of breast cancer being more pronounced than those of benign breast tumors. These findings suggest that CEUS may provide a more precise assessment of tumor size, which is crucial for determining optimal treatment strategies and improving patient outcomes in breast cancer management.