Improved hardware for higher spatial resolution strain-encoded (SENC) breast MRI for strain measurements

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Engineering
• Radiology
• Medical Imaging

Background:

• Mammography improves breast cancer detection but misses some lesions.
• Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) aids detection but has lower specificity.
• Strain-encoded (SENC) MRI and magnetic resonance elastography offer higher specificity by measuring tissue mechanical properties.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and evaluate a novel SENC breast MRI hardware device.
• To assess the performance of SENC MRI for measuring breast tissue strain characteristics.
• To improve the specificity of differentiating benign from malignant breast lesions.

Main Methods:

• A SENC breast hardware device was developed for periodic breast compression, enabling longer scan times and high-resolution (1 × 1 × 5 mm³) SENC MRI.
• The device incorporates simple controls and safety measures for accurate, repeatable, and safe in vivo experiments.
• Phantom experiments were conducted to compare SENC MRI with fast SENC imaging.

Main Results:

• SENC breast MRI demonstrated superior signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) compared to fast SENC imaging across various resolutions.
• Reproducibility measurements of the SENC breast device showed less than 1 mm difference with a 1% strain difference.
• Phantom experiments confirmed the enhanced image quality provided by the new SENC breast MRI technique.

Conclusions:

• SENC breast MRI yields higher SNR and CNR than fast SENC imaging.
• The developed SENC breast MRI device provides accurate and reproducible measurements.
• Combining SENC breast strain measurements with diagnostic breast MRI has the potential to increase diagnostic specificity for breast lesions.