Value of tomography in detecting breast masses and discriminating malign and benign lesions

The main purpose of the present study was to determine the effectivity of computerized tomography (CT) in detecting breast masses and discriminating masses as malignant or benign.

After having received the institutional local ethics committee approval, an experienced radiologist who did not participate in the study created a patient pool by searching our health center's Pathology department database between 2010 and 2018. The group created consisted of dense and non-dense breast types equally and included approximately similar percentages of benign and malignant breast mass sizes. Finally, 70 subjects were included: 30 females with definite malign, 20 with definite benign breast masses, and 20 without any breast pathology based on mammography and ultrasonography results, who were considered as the control group. Three experienced Radiologists (R1, R2, R3) who were not aware of the final diagnosis evaluated all images independently. Radiologist performance was assessed by calculating the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) and interobserver reliability values were estimated by intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) analysis.

The diagnostic accuracy suitability of CT according to BI-RADS scores for R1, R2 and R3 were found as p <0.001, p <0.001 and p <0.001, respectively. There were significant interobserver reliability rates between all investigators (p= 0.0001).

CT may be used as a valuable diagnostic tool in discriminating breast masses with further training in widely varying appearances of normal breast tissues leading to false positive findings.