Sunday, November 26 | 3:10 p.m.-3:20 p.m. | S5-SSBR02-5 | Room E450B
In this session, research will demonstrate how low-dose contrast enhanced mammography (CEM) can be used without fear of sacrificing on diagnostic performance.
A team led by Huizhi Cao, PhD, from Capital Medical University in Beijing, China, found that using lower doses of contrast in CEM shows comparable performance to that of conventional CEM.
CEM’s potential in breast imaging has been explored in previous studies. However, researchers have debated the use of contrast, including how much, in this area. Cao and colleagues wanted to study the image quality and diagnostic performance of low-dose CEM in women with suspicious findings on conventional imaging. It included data from 120 women who were evenly divided into two groups: conventional dose contrast (Iohexol at 1.5ml/kg body weight; 300 mg/ml) and low-dose contrast (Iohecol at 1 ml/kg body weight; 300 mg/ml).
The researchers found no statistically significant difference in signal-to-noise ratio and contrast-to-noise ratio between the two groups. They also found no statistical difference in the grayscale of the enhanced area as well as in the grayscale enhancement value between the enhanced area and the background area. The team also reported no significant difference in subjective scores between the two groups.
What's more, Cao et al found that low-dose CEM had an overall comparable performance to conventional dosage. These included values of area under the curve value, sensitivity, and specificity, as well as positive and negative predictive value.
Finally, the researchers reported that Bland-Altman analysis showed good consistency on tumor size between both CEM groups and pathological results.
The team suggested that low-dose CEM can clearly display the tumoral structure and enhancement features and that low-dose CEM can satisfy image quality requirements of clinical diagnosis. See what else the team found in this session.
