Ultrasound Evaluation of Regional lamph nodes in breast cancer

Understanding the range of normal and abnormal lymph nodes is essential for the sonologist who is performing a breast ultrasound. We evaluate lymph nodes in threedifferent levels: The first level is to determine whether palpable nodule is a lymph node or some other types of nodule. The second level is to determine which nodule is sonographically normal better and most distance level is to determine whether the finding that make lymph node to appear abnormal are caused by inflammation or neoplasm. Several different sonographic and Doppler finding are being employed to aid in the assessment of the inflammation versus malignancy such as: size ,shape, echogenicity,morphologic abnormality ,relation between adjacent lymph node ,right to left symmetry or asymmetry, Color Doppler flow pattern, Pulse Doppler spectral analysis waveform pattern