Comparison of medical image interpretation time between conventional and automated methods of breast ultrasound

Objective: To compare the medical image interpretation's time between the conventional and automated methods of breast ultrasound in patients with breast lesions. Secondarily, to evaluate the agreement between the two methods and interobservers. Methods: This is a cross-sectional study with prospective data collection. The agreement's degrees were established in relation to the breast lesions's ultrasound descriptors. To determine the accuracy of each method, a biopsy of suspicious lesions was performed, considering the histopathological result as the diagnostic gold standard. Results: We evaluated 27 women. Conventional ultrasound used an average medical time of 10.77 minutes [ +/- 2.55] greater than the average of 7.38 minutes [ +/- 2.06] for automated ultrasound [p<0.001]. The degrees of agreement between the methods ranged from 0.75 to 0.95 for researcher 1 and from 0.71 to 0.98 for researcher 2. Among the researchers, the degrees of agreement were between 0.63 and 1 for automated ultrasound and between 0.68 and 1 for conventional ultrasound. The area of the ROC curve for the conventional method was 0.67 [p=0.003] for researcher 1 and 0.72 [p<0.001] for researcher 2. The area of the ROC curve for the automated method was 0. 69 [p=0.001] for researcher 1 and 0.78 [p<0.001] for researcher 2. Conclusion: We observed less time devoted by the physician to automated ultrasound compared to conventional ultrasound, maintaining accuracy. There was substantial or strong to perfect interobserver agreement and substantial or strong to almost perfect agreement between the methods.