THE DIAGNOSTIC ROLE OF MULTIPARAMETRIC MRI IN PATIENTS WITH SONOMAMMOGRAPHIC BI-RADS 3 AND BI-RADS 4 BREAST LESIONS

Abstract

Breast cancer is most common cause of cancer deaths among women worldwide. Despite the improvement in the detection of breast cancer with the widespread application of mammography and ultrasound, some breast lesions still remain difficult to diagnose and characterize, especially in dense fibroglandular breasts and in differentiating post-operative changes from recurrent masses. Sonomammographically diagnosed BIRADS III and BIRADS IV lesions are considered indeterminate breast lesions and imaging dilemmas. This raised the need for other imaging modalities that would surpass the sensitivity and specificity of mammography alone or combined mammography and ultrasonography in the screening and ultimately final diagnosis of malignancy among patients presenting with such questionable lesions, hence was the need for breast MR imaging. The sensitivity of breast MRI for the detection of cancer is the greatest of all imaging techniques especially when the findings of conventional imaging are inconclusive. MRI can be used as a problem-solving modality, it is also better at identifying the true extent of cancer and help in cancer staging when multifocal disease or ductal carcinoma in situ is present. However its reported specificity is variable.