Objective:

To study the application value of alone or combination of three main elastic parameters-area ratio (AR)

strain ratio (SR) and shear wave velocity (SWV) of acoustic radiation force impulse imaging (ARFI)-in the identification of breast tumors.

Methods:

The characteristics of 132 breast masses in 113 cases were analyzed using ARFI. A regression equation was established

and a new variable PRE-1 to predict the probabilit

y was obtained by regression analysis of the three diagnostic indicators. The pathological results were set as the reference

and the diagnostic performance of three parameters alone and combined was evaluated using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves.

Results:

In total 132 lesions of 113 patients

69 lesions were benign and 63 were malignant. Benign tumors had an average AR of 2.821.03

SR of 1.260.40

which were significantly lower than malignant tumors (4.321.58 and 2.090.91

respectively)(

P

0.05); transverse SWV of the benign lesions was (3.100.99) m/s

which was significantly lower than that of the malignant lesions [(5.051.64) m/s

]

(

P

0.05). The areas under the ROC curves of AR

SR

SWV were 0.812

0.807

0.843

respectively

and 0.954 for combined diagnosis.

Conclusion:

The combined diagnosis of three parameters in the identification of benign or malignant breast masses is valuable. It provides more ideas and methods in the clinical diagnosis of breast masses.