Automated breast ultrasound

literature review

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: To describe automated breast ultrasound and discuss its applicability in the Brazilian context. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Systematic review of the literature published in the last 5 years with the following keywords: ultrasonography, mammary; breast ultrasonography and automated breast ultrasound. We retrieved 33 articles and selected for review 16. RESULTS: The performance of Automated Breast Ultrasound (ABUS) can be considered modest according to the literature. Considering ABUS sensitivity alone, it ranged from 67.3% to 78% in the coronal plane, and when both planes were considered, the sensitivity ranged from 67.6% to 82%. The specificity varied from 53.9% to 91.6% when used alone, and in association with tomosynthesis and or mammography, it reached 100%. On the other hand, we found 25% of specificity when it was evaluated along with tomosynthesis, and with mammography it was 98%. CONCLUSIONS: ABUS was thought to be an independent operator, but there is still insufficient data to prove its superiority in breast cancer screening to incorporate it into Brazilian clinical practice. It is worth mentioning that the presence of artifacts and pseudolesions can be solved by modifying the ultrasound parameters, including the focal zone, time and depth of compensation of the gain, and the pressure of the compression in the transducer or angle of insonation resulting in high quality images in the conventional handheld ultrasound. With automatic acquisition, however, an immediate exploration of a questionable injury is impossible because the machine settings are pre-set.