Conspicuity of suspicious breast lesions on contrast enhanced breast CT compared to digital breast tomosynthesis and mammography

Objective: Compare conspicuity of suspicious breast lesions on contrast-enhanced dedicated breast CT (CEbCT), tomosynthesis (DBT) and digital mammography (DM). Methods: 100 females with BI-RADS 4/5 lesions underwent CEbCT and/or DBT prior to biopsy in this IRB approved, HIPAA compliant study. Two breast radiologists adjudicated lesion conspicuity scores (CS) for each modality independently. Data are shown as mean CS ±standard deviation. Two-sided t-test was used to determine significance between two modalities within each subgroup. Multiple comparisons were controlled by the false-discovery rate set to 5%. Results: 50% of studied lesions were biopsy-confirmed malignancies. Malignant masses were more conspicuous on CEbCT than on DBT or DM (9.7 ±0.5, n = 25; 6.8 ± 3.1, n = 15; 6.7 ± 3.0, n = 27; p < 0.05). Malignant calcifications were equally conspicuous on all three modalities (CEbCT 8.7 ± 0.8, n = 18; DBT 8.5 ± 0.6, n = 15; DM 8.8 ± 0.7, n = 23; p = NS). Benign masses were equally conspicuous on CEbCT (6...