Three-Dimensional Assessment of Automated Breast Volume Scanner Compared with Handheld Ultrasound in Pre-Operative Breast Invasive Ductal Carcinomas: A Pilot Study of 51 Cases

The aim of the work described here was to compare the accuracy of conventional handheld ultrasound (HHUS) with that of an automated breast volume scanner (ABVS) in 3-D assessment of pre-operative invasive ductal carcinomas. HHUS and ABVS were used in 51 patients to obtain the largest tumor diameter, tumor volume and tumor surface area. The volumetric measurement was also obtained from ABVS data with medical software. With tumor size and volume on pathology as the gold standard, Bland-Altman analysis was used to compare variability. Correlation coefficients and receiver operating characteristic curves were established for all measurements for T2 classification. The correlation coefficients of all ABVS measurements were stronger than those of HHUS measurements, with the ABVS volumetric measurement significantly different with a higher accuracy of 88.24% (45/51) and predicting T-classification with higher area under the receiver operating characteristic curves (0.936). Therefore, 3-D measurements provide stronger correlations with pathology in tumor size measurement. However, more clinical trials are needed to confirm our findings.