Clinical Significance of Microcalcifications Detection in Invasive Breast Carcinoma

Recently, a lot of cases with microcalcifications of the breast are pointed by the images of mammography (MG), because breast screening using MG become common. Although MG is a gold standard modality for detecting microcalcifications, images of ultrasonography (US) are now feasible to detect microcalcifications with recent improvements to ultrasound diagnostic devices.1-4 There have been several studies on the performance of US for detecting microcalcifications, but most reports focused on ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS). 1-3, 5 Microcalcifications are seen in invasive carcinomas as well as DCIS (Fig. 1), but there have been few detailed studies about the significance of microcalcifications in such carcinomas. In this study, we compared the presence of microcalcifications on US images with findings from MG images and clinical pathology, to interpret the significance of detection of microcalcifications on US images. Fig. 1. US images show microcalcifications (arrows) observed not only in DCIS (left) but also in invasive carcinoma (right).