Clinical evaluation of contrast-enhanced power Doppler in diagnosing of breast masses

Objective To study the characteristics of power Doppler flow signal in breast masses before and after intravenous ultrasound contrast agent.Methods Fifty one patients with breast mass (28 benign, 23 malignant) were performed by power Doppler before and after intravenous injection of Levovist. Patterns of vascular,color pixel density with computer assistant and the time to peak contrast enhancement of power Doppler flow signal were analyzed. Results After contrast agent injection, there was greater enhancement in malignant group than in benign group. For malignant lesions the disordered, penetrating and branching vessels were seen more often, 69.6 %, 73.9 %, 82.6 % respectively, compared to 21.4% , 32.1 %, 28.6 % for benign lesions. The correlation between benign and malignant lesions was statistically significant (P 0.05 ). Color pixel density was greater in malignant group than in benign group. The time to initial enhancement and the time to peak enhancement were shorter in malignant group than in benign group (P 0.05 ).Conclusions Levovist provides significant improvement of power Doppler signal in breast lesion and can be useful to improve the visualization of blood flow pattern. Contrast enhanced power Doppler is beneficial for differentiating breast masses.