Fig. 11

Strain USE scoring system showing a typical 4-point qualitative scoring system. The chromatic scale in this machine, shown on the right side of each elastogram, differs from that used on the machine used to generate Fig. 10, with red and purple colours denoting high and low relative stiffness respectively. The examples shown for ES1 and ES2 were a collapsed haemorrhagic cystic nodule and benign hyperplastic nodule respectively, and ES3 and ES4 were papillary carcinomas. These examples would be classified correctly using most scoring systems published to date, which generally apply a strain USE threshold of ES3 or greater to predict malignancy