We read with great interest the study by Kim et al. 1, which examined whether background echotexture (BE) and glandular tissue components (GTCs) assessed using preoperative automated breast ultrasound (ABUS) are associated with cancer multiplicity assessment and recurrence-free survival (RFS) in patients with early-stage breast cancer.By extending ABUS from lesion-centered detection to background breast tissue characterization, the authors addressed a timely and clinically relevant direction, as imaging-based risk stratification increasingly emphasizes host tissue phenotyping.Therefore, careful consideration of the interpretation and translation of these background features into clinical decision-making is warranted.First, the definition of RFS in this study combines qualitatively distinct failure modes and may, therefore, obscure the meaning of the observed associations with ABUS-derived background features.RFS encompassed ipsilateral in-breast or regional events, contralateral breast
Sun et al. (Thu,) studied this question.