Victor, Pizzitola

6 Background: Traditional screening mammography (MG) enables early detection of breast cancer and therefore results in decreased mortality. Mammography, however, is an imperfect tool and limited by an overall sensitivity of 75-85%. Specificity is limited as well resulting in many false-positive examinations and unnecessary follow-up examinations. The recent development of contrast-enhanced digital mammography (CEDM) has made the usage of IV contrast enhancement with mammography a possibility. CEDM is an angiographic technique that uses digital subtraction, which removes the normal mammary gland on images in order to detect breast tumors and visualize their vascularity. The literature is promising with regard to CEDM as studies have found that CEDM achieves increased sensitivity without reductions in specificity in comparison to MG, US and/or MRI. Methods: In this multi-reader study we compared the diagnostic accuracy of CEDM as an adjunct to MG/US in patients with suspicious findings (BI-RADS 4). The study population included 31 patients who were imaged with CEDM prior to their scheduled US or stereotactic-guided biopsy. We compared the relative performance of MG/US alone versus MG/US/CEDM in determining the probability of malignancy. Histology served as the gold standard. Results: See table below. Conclusions: The addition of CEDM to the workup of suspected lesions on MG and/or US preliminarily decreases the number of false-positive MG thereby with potential to reduce cost and unnecessary patient harm. [Table: see text]