Diagnostic performances of shear-wave elastography for identification of malignant breast lesions: a meta-analysis

To examine the performance of shear-wave elastography (SWE) for the differentiation of benign and malignant breast lesions using a meta-analysis.

PubMed, Embase and the Cochrane library were searched for studies published up to January 2014. The references of retrieved relevant articles were reviewed to identify potential publications. Random-effect meta-analysis was conducted to assess the overall sensitivity and specificity of SWE in the differentiation of breast lesions.

A total of 11 articles, including 2424 patients, were included in the present meta-analysis. The summarized sensitivity and specificity of the shear wave elastography performance based on maximum elasticity were 0.93 (95 % CI 0.91-0.95) and 0.81 (95 % CI 0.78-0.83), respectively. For the mean elasticity, the summarized sensitivity and specificity were 0.94 (95 % CI 0.92-0.96) and 0.71 (95 % CI 0.69-0.74), respectively. The summarized sensitivity and specificity were 0.77 (95 % CI 0.70-0.83) and 0.88 (95 % CI 0.84-0.91) for the SD of elasticity.

SWE has a high sensitivity and specificity in the differentiation of benign and malignant breast lesions. More large and prospective studies are warranted to further examine the performance of SWE.