Abstract: Objective To evaluate the feasibility and the diagnostic value of acoustic radiation force impulse （ARFI） in discriminating benign from malignant breast lesions. Methods The virtual touch tissue quantification（VTQ） values were analyzed in 146 patients with 150 breast lesions. All breast lesions were confirmed through surgery or biopsy pathology. The cutoff values were determined by an analysis of receiveroperating characteristic（ROC） curve using pathology as the golden criteria. Results There were 55 benign lesions and 95 malignant lesions in 150 lesions. The VTQ value of benign and malignant breast lesions were (2.05±1.58)m/s and (6.94±2.11)m/s, respectively. There was significant difference in the VTQ value between benign and malignant breast lesions（P＜0.05）.The areas under ROC curves was 0.811（95％CI： 0.740-0.883）.The cut off point of VTQ value was determined as 2.5m／s， and the sensitivity， specificity and accuracy were 79％， 71％ and 75％.The cut off point of VTQ value was determined as 28m／s in those more than 8mm breast lesions， and the sensitivity， specificity and accuracy were 90％， 82％ and 85％.
Conclusion ARFI can provide new quantitative elasticity information of breast lesions， which is a new helpful method in discriminating benign from malignant breast lesions，especially in those more than 8mm breast lesions.