DIFFERENTIAL-DIAGNOSIS OF BREAST-LESIONS BY COLOR DOPPLER

Color Doppler allows flow detection in small tumor vessels. Due to the vascularity associated with the growth of malignancies, this method c an be used to differentiate between benign and malignant breast lesion s. In order to study the typical flow characteristics, we investigated multiple Doppler flow parameters. A UM9 HDI (ATL) was used with a lin ear transducer L 10-5. The number of tumor vessels and the mean, maxim um and total flow velocity were measured in 325 benign and 133 maligna nt lesions and showed highly significant differences (p < 0.0001). Flo w profiles (resistance index and systolic/diastolic frequency ratio) s howed a large overlap and did not allow accurate tumor differentiation when mean and minimum values were analyzed. Surprisingly, the maximum resistance index and systolic/diastolic frequency ratio were signific antly higher in carcinomas than in benign lesions, bur the overlap of the values was wider than the flow velocity measurements. Using the ve ssel number and the total tumor vascularity, 90% of all lesions could be differentiated. A difficulty that we encountered was that a few can cers have very low flow values and some of the proliferative benign le sions can have increased flow.