Diagnostic performance of tomosynthesis, digital mammography and a dedicated digital specimen radiography system versus pathological assessment of excised breast lesions
Article Category: Research Article
Published Online: Oct 13, 2022
Page range: 461 - 470
Received: May 23, 2022
Accepted: Jul 06, 2022
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/raon-2022-0036
© 2022 Sa’ed Almasarweh, Mazen Sudah, Hidemi Okuma, Sarianna Joukainen, Vesa Kärjä, Ritva Vanninen, Amro Masarwah, published by Sciendo
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Background
The aim of the study was to compare the performance of full-field digital mammography (FFDM), digital breast tomosynthesis and a dedicated digital specimen radiography system (SRS) in consecutive patients, and to compare the margin status of resected lesions versus pathological assessment.
Patients and methods
Resected tissue specimens from consecutive patients who underwent intraoperative breast specimen assessment following wide local excision or oncoplastic breast conservative surgery were examined by FFDM, tomosynthesis and SRS. Two independent observers retrospectively evaluated the visibility of lesions, size, margins, spiculations, calcifications and diagnostic certainty, and chose the best performing method in a blinded manner.
Results
We evaluated 216 specimens from 204 patients. All target malignant lesions were removed with no tumouron-ink. One papilloma had positive microscopic margins and one patient underwent reoperation owing to extensive
Conclusions
Tomosynthesis was superior to SRS and FFDM for detecting and evaluating the target lesions, spiculations and calcifications, and was therefore more reliable for assessing complete excision of breast lesions.