Application of breast ultrasound in detail

With the continuous improvement of social pressure and life rhythm, breast disease has gradually become a common disease among women in China, and its incidence rate has been rapidly rising in recent years, and it ranks first in the incidence rate of female tumors. It has attracted extensive attention from the medical circles at home and abroad. With the extensive implementation of breast census and the continuous updating of diagnostic imaging technology, the discovery rate and accuracy of diagnosis of breast diseases have been continuously improved. According to the 2006 malignant tumor report of Shanghai Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the incidence rate of female breast cancer in Shanghai has increased by 138% in the past 30 years. The Affiliated Cancer Hospital of Fudan University counted 6,167 cases of breast cancer from 1990 to 2005, showing that 56% were premenopausal women. Therefore, early and high incidence of breast cancer has become the characteristic of breast cancer incidence in Shanghai. As a result of the increase in the incidence of breast cancer, the death rate of breast cancer will increase simultaneously, and the burden of medical treatment will be aggravated. Breast cancer screening data in the United States show that the breast cancer death rate in the United States increased at an annual rate of 0.4% from 1975 to 1990. However, due to the widespread implementation of screening, the breast cancer death rate decreased at an annual rate of 2.3% from 1990 to 2000. The outcome of breast cancer treatment is closely related to early diagnosis and timely treatment. Early breast cancer screening has been internationally recognized as an effective preventive and control measure to improve patient survival and reduce mortality. Ultrasound has been used in the examination of breast diseases for more than fifty years, Wild (1951) and other foreign scholars used pulsed A-mode ultrasound to detect breast tissues and breast masses and obtained individual B-mode sonograms, and Kossoff G (1972) reported that gray-scale ultrasound could clearly show the breast and its pathological features. China began to apply real-time ultrasound to carry out ultrasonography for breast diseases in the late 70s, the earliest report was by Xu Guangbo (1979), and high-frequency probe was applied to diagnose breast diseases in the mid-to-late 80s, which achieved better results. After entering the 1990s, the ultrasound community at home and abroad reported a large number of color flow imaging applied to the diagnosis of breast diseases (especially breast tumors), so that the ultrasound examination of breast diseases has made great progress in the depth and breadth of research. Breast ultrasound was initially used to grossly visualize the structure of the breast and to a certain extent to help identify cystic and solid masses. However, with the continuous development of image resolution and computer processing technology, and the continuous application of ultrasonography, elasticity, three-dimensional ultrasound technology, ultrasonography can reflect more and more of the fine structure of the mammary glands and small foci, ultrasonography diagnosis of breast diseases has become a routine means of examination with high sensitivity and specificity. Ultrasonography is painless and non-radioactive, can be repeated for short periods of time, and is suitable for women of any age and at any physiological period, including pregnancy and lactation. There is no need for special preparation before the examination, and it is simple to perform, with no blind spots. Moreover, due to the superficial location of the breast, ultrasound has good resolution of soft tissues and is able to clearly show all layers of the breast and chest wall structure, which allows it to determine the anatomical location and level of the lesion, identify breast masses and chest wall masses, and detect small masses of several millimeters in the breast. Ultrasound can measure the size of the breast lump, show the internal structure of the lump, determine the physical nature of the lump (cystic, solid or mixed cystic-solid), and understand the infiltration of the breast tumor into the surrounding tissues. According to the sonogram performance, combined with the characteristics of blood flow signals, it helps to further identify the benign or malignant nature of breast tumors. Ultrasound-guided cytology or coarse needle aspiration biopsy as well as treatment are selectively performed for breast tumors that cannot be identified. In summary, compared with some other auxiliary examination methods, ultrasonography has the advantages of non-invasiveness, simplicity, ease of implementation, etc., and can also be observed dynamically, and the clinical diagnostic compliance rate is also higher, so breast ultrasonography has been taken as one of the clinically important routine imaging examination methods. However, breast ultrasonography has limitations such as operator dependence, subjective factors, and hidden lesions.