Ex Vivo Assessment of Sentinel Lymph Nodes in Breast Cancer Using Shear Wave Elastography

Abstract

Objectives-Axillary lymph node status is one of the important prognostic factors in early-stage breast cancer. Despite the combined use of sonography, fine-needle aspiration, and sentinel lymph node (SLN) dissection, there is a gap between the potential effectiveness of those techniques and current success to determine the axillary lymph node status. The main aim of this study was to evaluate the baseline accuracy of shear wave elastography for differentiation of benign versus malignant SLNs in an ex vivo arti-fact-free environment.