Journal of Ultrasound in Medicine, Vol 14, Issue 3 217-227, Copyright © 1995 by American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine
Adaptive speckle reduction for improving the differential diagnosis of breast lesions
D. C. Crawford, D. O. Cosgrove, E. Tohno, C. Bossi, R. Kedar, D. S. Bell, S. Kale, A. Norman and J. C. Bamber
Department of Ultrasound, Royal Marsden Hospital, Sutton, United Kingdom.
Adaptive speckle reduction could mask diagnostic features and adversely
affect diagnosis of focal breast lesions. Four radiologists assessed focal
breast lesions (29 malignant and 31 benign) by blind review of
representative static B-mode scans before and after adaptive speckle
reduction processing, scoring 14 diagnostic features for breast cancer and
recording their opinions on the diagnosis and on how adaptive speckle
reduction affected interpretation of each feature. No adverse affect on
diagnosis of malignant (P = 0.756) or benign (P = 1.000) breast lesions was
found, despite some differences in scoring of the diagnostic features after
adaptive speckle reduction. Observer recognition of most diagnostic
features was easier after adaptive speckle reduction (e.g., edge definition
[50% of cases], edge regularity [40%], lesion texture [44%], and lesion
echogenicity [35%]).
