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Updated: Mar 1, 2026
Tracking the Mammary Architectural Features and Detecting Breast Cancer with Magnetic Resonance Diffusion Tensor Imaging
Published on: December 15, 2014
Rim sign and histogram analysis of apparent diffusion coefficient values on diffusion-weighted MRI in triple-negative
Yangsean Choi1, Sung Hun Kim1, In Kyung Youn1
1Department of Radiology, Seoul St. Mary's Hospital, College of Medicine, The Catholic University of Korea, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
Purpose:
To investigate associations between the clinicopathologic features and MRI features of triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) and ER-positive breast cancer (BC) via apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) histogram analysis.
Materials And Methods:
In this study, 221 breast cancer patients with pre-operative MRI performed from August 2009 to March 2015 were included in a retrospective analysis. All patients had a pathologically confirmed diagnosis of invasive carcinoma and were grouped into ER-positive (149) or triple-negative (72) subtypes. DWI rim sign and various ADC parameters (mean; mode; 25, 50, and 75 percentiles; skewness; and kurtosis) between ER-positive and TNBC were compared using whole-lesion ADC histogram analysis. Univariate and multivariate regression analyses were used for statistical comparison.
Results:
DWI rim signs were detected in 42.3% and 41.7% of ER-positive subtype and TNBC, respectively (P = 0.931). TNBC had poorer histologic grade (P<0.001) and higher Ki-67 expression (P <0.001) than ER-positive subtype BC. TNBC displayed higher ADC parameters (mean, mode, 50th & 75th percentiles, kurtosis on univariate analysis, all P<0.001; only kurtosis on multivariate anaylsis; P<0.001) than ER-positive subtype BC. TNBC had significantly more recurrence events than ER-positive subtype BC on univarate analysis (9.7% (7/72) vs. 2.7% (4/149), P = 0.035).
Conclusion:
Poorer clinicopathologic outcomes were found in TNBC. Whole-lesion ADC histogram analysis revealed ADC kurtosis to be higher in TNBC than ER-positive subtype BC.
