[Utilisation of electrical impedance tomography and/or ultrasound and mammography in breast disease diagnosis: a controlled study].

To investigate the diagnostic accuracy of electrical impedance tomography (EIT) for benign and malignant breast diseases incomparison to conventional ultrasonography and mammography. A total of 121 patients with 126 breast lesions who underwent mammography ultrasonography and EIT were enrolled in the study. All of these lessions were were confirmed by pathological biopsy. The accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value and negative predictive value of EIT, ultrasonography and mammography were calculated with histology as the gold standard. The accuracy of EIT, ultrasonography and mammography were 75.4%, 81.7% and 76.1% respectively. The sensitivity was 76.8%, 94.6% and 74.4% respectively. The specificity was 74.3%, 71.4% and 77.6% respectively. The accuracy, sensitivity and specificity of EIT combined with ultrasound in diagnosis of breast lesions were 91.3%, 98.2% and 85.7%, respectively. The accuracy(χ(2)=4.896, =0.027) and specificity(χ(2)=4.242, =0.039) ere significantly higher on EIT compared to ultrasound.The accuracy, sensitivity and specificity of EIT combined with mammography were 95.5%, 97.4% and 93.9%, respectively, which were significantly higher than those of mammography (χ(2)=13.474, <0.001; χ(2)=8.573, =0.003; χ(2)=5.333, =0.021). When together with ultrasound or mammography, electrical impedance tomography (EIT) could be a valuable complementary examination in the diagnosis of breast diseases. Furthermore, EIT could provide very useful additional information for metabolic assessment of mammary glands, which may be used for early screening of breast diseases.