To develop a portable handhold 3D Ultrasound imaging and diagnostic system, and to validate its reliability and accuracy in the clinical diagnosis of carotid atherosclerotic plaque.

First acquisition enrolled 55 carotid arteries images by a portable probe which was an important part of the 3D Ultrasound imaging and diagnostic system. 25 arteries were the training set and 30 for validation set. Second acquisition enrolled 84 arteries as an independent validation set. The diagnostic result of our System in carotid plaque including AUC, specificity, sensitivity, accuracy was calculated.

A set of learning-based method for automatic segmentation, reconstruction and diagnosis was established. In the validation set and independent validation set, the AUC, sensitivity, specificity and accuracy achieved 0.708 (95%CI: 0.509-0.908)/0.860 (95%CI: 0.773-0.953), 83.3%/83.9%, 58.3%/88.7%, 73.3%/86.9%, respectively.

The proposed portable handhold 3D Ultrasound imaging and diagnostic system achieved a satisfactory sensitivity, specificity and accuracy in the diagnosis of carotid plaque. Although dependence on operators was an inevitable problem in routine ultrasound examination, the diagnosis results of our system were not highly dependent on examiner experience. In the future, the system could be applied to carotid atherosclerosis screening in communities or remote settings to help address the shortage of ultrasound examiners.

Conventional ultrasound (US) elastography lacks specificity in distinguishing benign from malignant breast lesions. This study employed US to assess breast tissue viscosity and elasticity. The primary objective was to evaluate the diagnostic performance of US-derived viscoelasticity parameters. Secondary objectives included investigating the consistency of parameters in the mechanical properties of breast tissue.

Two doctors independently measured the viscosity and elasticity of specific positions in the breasts of 20 health females for consistency assessment. Then the doctors selected region of interest (ROI) to measure viscoelasticity. ROI-1, ROI-2, and ROI-3 represent the tumor, peritumoral, and peripheral areas, respectively. The viscosity modulus and elasticity modulus of 3 ROIs were analyzed. The viscosity and elasticity parameters with the highest area under the curve (AUC) were selected as the optimal ones. Finally, elasticity and viscosity parameters were combined to assess their diagnostic performance in differentiating breast lesions.

US viscoelasticity parameters can be measured with high consistency. Among conventional US elasticity parameters, 1-Emax demonstrated the highest AUC (0.746) for differentiating benign and malignant breast lesions. In US viscoelasticity parameters, 2-Emax achieved the highest AUC of 0.801, while 2-Vmax showed the highest AUC of 0.835. The highest specificity (0.903) was observed when both 2-Emax and 2-Vmax exceeded their respective cutoff values (P < 0.05 for all).

Quantitative ultrasound viscoelasticity parameters play a crucial role in breast cancer diagnosis, with tumor boundary parameters being particularly significant for cancer screening and prevention strategies.