Breast sonotomography and high-frequency, hand-held, real-time sonography: a clinical comparison

The diagnostic quality of breast sonography as performed with a dedicated tomographic unit (ST) and a hand-held, high-frequency, real-time transducer (RT) was evaluated in 76 patients. In 38 per cent of cases, ST was found to be of equal diagnostic quality to RT. The number of instances in which ST was judged to be better than RT was slightly greater than those in which RT was considered better than ST (34 vs. 24 per cent) (P less than or equal to 0.10). In 3 per cent of cases, the diagnostic quality of both ST or RT was considered to be poor. The majority of instances when the diagnostic quality of ST was judged to be better than RT occurred in establishing a negative diagnosis, whereas RT seemed to have greater diagnostic quality than ST in the evaluation of a palpable mass.