Carson P L, Scherzinger A L, Meyer C R, Jobe W, Samuels B, Adler D D
Department of Radiology, University of Michigan Medical Center, Ann Arbor.
Invest Radiol. 1988 Jun;23(6):421-7. doi: 10.1097/00004424-198806000-00003.
From 95 subjects imaged with both speed of sound and attenuation ultrasonic computed tomography (UCT), analyses were performed on 40 cases for which unequivocal clinical diagnoses were available for correlation. This paper describes the UCT image characteristics and addresses the hypothesis that carcinomas and other lesions can be detected and localized by means of simple visual criteria or lesion characteristics that are quantitative relative to those of other breast tissues in the same patient. The most useful within-patient criterion was selection of the solid mass with the highest speed of sound in either breast (12 of 12 carcinomas). Architectural asymmetry between breasts in the three types of images was a significant contributing factor in visual image interpretation in seven of the eight cancer patients in whom there were comparable images of both breasts. Solid masses were discriminated by attenuation coefficient and pulse echo criteria. Our results did not substantiate the hypothesis that the average speed of sound throughout the cancer containing breast would be higher than in the contralateral breast. These results are better than might be expected from pulse echo imaging alone on this population. However, clinical implementation probably should be deferred until the technique is made more convenient and less expensive, or more accurate with a greater promise for diagnosis of minimal cancers.
对95名接受了声速和衰减超声计算机断层扫描（UCT）成像的受试者进行分析，针对其中40例有明确临床诊断可供对照的病例开展了研究。本文描述了UCT图像特征，并探讨了如下假设：通过简单的视觉标准或相对于同一患者其他乳腺组织而言具有定量特征的病变特征，能够检测并定位癌和其他病变。患者体内最有用的标准是选择双侧乳腺中声速最高的实性肿块（12例癌中有12例符合）。在8例双侧乳腺有可比图像的癌症患者中，有7例患者的三种类型图像中双侧乳腺的结构不对称是视觉图像解读的一个重要因素。实性肿块通过衰减系数和脉冲回波标准进行鉴别。我们的结果并未证实如下假设：含有癌的乳腺的平均声速会高于对侧乳腺。这些结果优于仅通过脉冲回波成像对该人群可能得出的预期结果。然而，在该技术变得更便捷、成本更低，或者在诊断微小癌方面更准确且更有前景之前，临床应用可能应推迟。
