Intratumoral Intensity in T2-weighted MRI and the Association With Histological and Molecular Prognostic Factors in...

To compare the intratumoral T2 signal intensity on MRI and histopathological and molecular expression of biomarkers of aggressiveness (histological grade, hormonal status, HER2, and Ki-67).

This retrospective study included all women with invasive breast cancer undergoing MRI from January 2014 to October 2016. The intratumoral T2 signal as interpreted at consensus by two radiologists was compared to histopathological and molecular prognostic factors from the surgical specimen. Statistical analyses used Pearson χ 2 test with a confidence level of 95% (P ≤ 0.05).

Fifty patients with 50 lesions met study criteria (mean age 65.8 ± 13.5 years). Mean lesion size was 28 mm ± 15.7 mm (range, 15 to 76 mm). Cancer types were invasive ductal (35/50, 70%), invasive lobular (10/50, 20%), and mixed (5/50, 10%). Most lesions were histological grade 1 or 2 (41/50, 82%) and luminal type (45/50, 90%). On T2 images, lesions were hypointense in 62% (31/50), isointense in 20% (10/50), and hyperintense in 18% (9/50) of cases. Among hypointense lesions, 94% (29/31) were low or intermediate grade tumors (P = 0.02), low HER2 overexpression (30/31, 97%) (P = 0.005), and high ER status (30/31, 97%) (P = 0.006), high PR (26/31, 84%) (P = 0.02), and low incidence of necrosis (2/31, 6%). The difference in Ki-67 tumoral expression between groups was not significant.

Intratumoral T2 hypointensity in invasive breast cancer is associated with better prognostic tumors, such as histological low-grade high hormone receptor status.