Digital breast tomosynthesis plus mammography, magnetic resonance imaging plus mammography and mammography alone: A comparison of diagnostic performance in symptomatic women.

PURPOSE: To compare the diagnostic efficiency of digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) plus digital mammography (DM) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) plus DM in symptomatic women.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: The protocol used in our study was accepted by the ethics committee at our hospital, and informed consent was obtained from all patients. Between June and December 2014, 197 patients with 238 histologically proven lesions all underwent DM, DBT and MRI. Two radiologists were responsible for interpreting all images according to the Breast Imaging Reporting and Data System (BI-RADS). The diagnostic performance of each method was assessed by receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curve. The sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, positive predictive value (PPV) and negative predictive value (NPV) were compared using McNemar's test and Fisher's exact test. A Kappa test was used to assess the interobserver agreement.

RESULTS: The area under the ROC curve (AUC) was lower in the group that underwent DM alone (Radiologist1 [R1], 0.849; Radiologist2 [R2], 0.850) than in the group that underwent DBT plus DM (R1, 0.907, P = 0.0204; R2, 0.900, P = 0.0239) and MRI plus DM (R1, 0.939, P = 0.0006; R2, 0.935, P = 0.0009). However, the difference between the group that received DBT plus DM and the group that received MRI plus DM was not significant (R1, P = 0.1262; R2, P = 0.0843). The accuracy (R1, 71.8%; R2, 71.4%) and sensitivity (R1, 71.9%; R2, 71.2%) of DM were lower than those of DBT ((accuracy: R1, 85.3%, P = 0.001; R2, 83.6%, P < 0.001; sensitivity: R1,92.1%, P < 0.001; R2, 90.8%, P < 0.001) and MRI combined with DM (accuracy: R1, 90.3%, P = 0.001; R2, 90.7%, P < 0.001; sensitivity: R1, 94.7%, P < 0.001; R2, 95.4%, P < 0.001). In contrast, no significant difference was observed between DBT and MRI combined with DM (accuracy: R1, P = 0.644; R2, P = 0.360; sensitivity: R1, P = 0.502; R2, P = 0.359). The interobserver agreement of each method was excellent (k = 0.894 0.919 and 0.882 for DM, DBT and MRI combined with DM, respectively).

CONCLUSION: The diagnostic performance of DBT and MRI combined with DM is superior to that of DM alone in symptomatic women; MRI plus DM is slightly better than that of DBT plus DM, but this difference was not statistically significant.