Objective To investigate the value of acoustic radiation force impulse (ARFI) in differential diagnosis between benign and malignant breast tumors.Methods Virtual touch tissue imaging (VTI) and virtual touch tissue quantification (VTQ) of ARFI elastography were used to estimate the properties and extent and measured the shear wave velocities (SWV) of the breast tumors,respectively.Results The mean SWV of breast cancer and benign lesion were (7.84 ±2.51)m/s and (2.79 ±0.92)m/s.There was significant difference in the SWV between benign and malignant breast tumors (P ＜ 0.01).The area under curve (AUC) of receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve of the SWV in differentiating benign from malignant breast tumors was 0.886.With SWV 4.4 as cut-off,the sensitivity,specificity,accuracy,positive predictive value and negative predictive value in the diagnosis of malignant from benign breast tumors were 78.7％,100％,91.7％,100％,88％,respectively.Conclusions ARFI elastography could reflect the elastic characteristics of breast tumors,which might be useful for the differential diagnosis between benign and malignant breast tumors.