Ultrasound-based radiomics for the evaluation of breast cancer

Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women all over the world. Ultrasound examination is instrumental in breast lesion screening, diagnosis and prognosis assessment, relying on non-radiation, inexpensiveness and real-time operation. However, it still has some limitations in diagnostic sensitivity and specificity. Radiomics aims at extracting high-throughput quantitative features from medical images, so as to deeply mine image information and further discover tumor features that cannot be discerned by naked eyes. Ultrasound radiomics models are gradually applied in evaluating breast cancer diagnosis and therapy, aiming to help with the precise diagnosis, prediction and treatment. This review summarizes the recent research progress of ultrasound radiomics in diagnosing benign and malignant breast lesion, predicting molecular subtype, lymph node status, neoadjuvant chemotherapy response and disease prognosis. Besides, the review also discusses the challenges and future research perspectives regarding ultrasound-based radiomics for the evaluation of breast cancer.