[Computer-assisted tissue analysis for cancer detection in breast ultrasound--significance of reference values]

Due to the inhomogeneous and very variable structure of healthy tissue of the female breast it is often very difficult to detect a carcinoma via computer-aided sonography. The present study based on preoperative measurements in 29 woman patients with carcinoma of the breast aimed at finding out to what extent it would be possible to circumvent this problem by means of additional reference measurements in healthy tissue. For this purpose, relative image parameters were determined besides absolute ones from measurements in tumorous and healthy reference tissue. These relative image parameters are much more suitable for subsequent decision analysis on account of their narrower range of variation. The results obtained in this manner could be improved further by additional optimization or extension (such as analysis of other combinations of parameters, by enlarging the field of measurement and hence the data available per tissue sample, use of higher or even different ultrasound frequencies).