Intravoxel incoherent motion diffusion-weighted MRI at 3.0 T differentiates malignant breast lesions from benign...

Area of Science:

• Radiology
• Medical Imaging
• Oncology

Background:

• Distinguishing malignant from benign breast lesions is crucial for patient management.
• Diffusion-weighted MRI (DW-MRI) using apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) and intravoxel incoherent motion (IVIM) parameters shows promise in lesion characterization.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the efficacy of ADC and IVIM parameters in differentiating malignant breast lesions from benign lesions and fibroglandular tissue (FGT).

Main Methods:

• Retrospective analysis of DW-MRI data from 35 patients with 26 malignant and 14 benign breast lesions.
• Acquisition using 3.0T MRI with nine b-values (0-1000 s/mm(2)).
• Determination of ADC, IVIM parameters (perfusion fraction fp, pseudodiffusion coefficient Dp, true diffusion coefficient Dd) in lesions and FGT, with comparison to high-risk normal subjects.

Main Results:

• Malignant lesions exhibited significantly higher fp (6.4 ± 3.1%) compared to benign lesions (3.1 ± 3.3%) and FGT (1.5 ± 1.2%).
• Malignant lesions showed lower Dd ((1.29 ± 0.28) × 10(-3) mm(2)/s) than benign lesions ((1.56 ± 0.28) × 10(-3) mm(2)/s) and FGT ((1.86 ± 0.34) × 10(-3) mm(2)/s).
• A combination of Dd and fp yielded higher AUC (0.84 for malignant vs. benign, 0.97 for malignant vs. FGT) than ADC alone (0.72 and 0.86, respectively).

Conclusions:

• IVIM parameters, particularly the combination of Dd and fp, offer superior accuracy in identifying malignant breast lesions compared to ADC alone.
• These findings suggest IVIM parameters are valuable tools for improving breast lesion characterization in MRI.