Inflammatory Carcinoma of the Breast: Characteristic Findings of MR Imaging

Inflammatory breast carcinoma (IBC) Shows a unique clinical appearance and has an extremely poor prognosis. Although immediate intensive therapy has been proposed, diagnosis of this disease tends to be delayed as its clinical features can be confused with acute mastitis. The conventional imaging modalities including mammography and ultrasonography are of limited value in the diagnosis of IBC, as it is difficult to delineate specific findings of the swollen dense breast. Recently, magnetic resonance (MR) imaging has been widely applied to breast diseases. One of the excellent features of this modality is its diagnostic ability in dense breasts. However, few trials to evaluate the capability of this new modality for IBC have been documented. In recent years, we found that a characteristic feature in 5 cases of IBC was a strong signal on T2-weighted images (T2WI) of MR imaging at the retromammary and subcutaneous area. Pathological features of the retromammary area showed marked interstitial edema and focal lymphatic involvement by tumor cells. These characteristic images obtained by MR imaging may be suggestive of inflammatroy breast carcinoma. Furthermore, subtracted dynamic MR imaging indicated the site of the tumor. Therefore, the application of MR imaging for swollen breasts would assist in the immediate diagnosis of IBC and would contribute to appropriate and timely therapy.