A review of quantitative diffusion-weighted MR imaging for breast cancer: Towards noninvasive biomarker

Quantitative diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) is an important adjunct to conventional breast MRI and shows promise as a noninvasive biomarker of breast cancer in multiple clinical scenarios, from the discrimination of benign and malignant lesions, prediction, and evaluation of treatment response to a prognostic assessment of breast cancer. Various quantitative parameters are derived from different DWI models based on special prior knowledge and assumptions, have different meanings, and are easy to confuse. In this review, we describe the quantitative parameters derived from conventional and advanced DWI models commonly used in breast cancer and summarize the promising clinical applications of these quantitative parameters. Although promising, it is still challenging for these quantitative parameters to become clinically useful noninvasive biomarkers in breast cancer, as multiple factors may result in variations in quantitative parameter measurements. Finally, we briefly describe some considerations regarding the factors that cause variations.