Evaluation of Malignant Breast Lesions Using High-resolution Readout-segmented Diffusion-weighted Echo-planar...

Area of Science:

• Radiology
• Oncology
• Medical Imaging

Background:

• Accurate visualization of malignant breast lesions is crucial for diagnosis and treatment planning.
• High-resolution diffusion-weighted imaging (HR-DWI) offers potential for improved lesion detection and characterization.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the performance of HR-DWI with readout-segmented echo-planar imaging in visualizing malignant breast lesions.
• To assess the accuracy of HR-DWI in determining the extent of malignant breast lesions compared to pathological findings.

Main Methods:

• Retrospective analysis of patients with pathologically confirmed malignant breast lesions who underwent HR-DWI.
• Independent evaluation of HR-DWI by two blinded radiologists to identify and measure lesions.
• Comparison of lesion sizes from HR-DWI with pathological measurements using Spearman's correlation coefficient.
• Measurement of apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) values for identified lesions.

Main Results:

• HR-DWI successfully detected 97.9% of malignant mass lesions, with excellent correlation (Spearman's r = 0.89-0.90) and size agreement (within 10 mm for >90%) with pathology.
• Detection rates for non-mass lesions were lower (50-54.7%), with moderate agreement (Spearman's r = 0.22-0.59).
• Mean ADC values were 0.80 × 10^-3 mm²/s for mass lesions and 0.89 × 10^-3 mm²/s for non-mass lesions.

Conclusions:

• HR-DWI demonstrates high accuracy in visualizing and assessing the extent of malignant breast mass lesions, correlating well with pathological outcomes.
• The current HR-DWI technique has limitations in detecting non-mass malignant breast lesions.
• Further advancements in HR-DWI may improve the detection of non-mass lesions in breast cancer imaging.