The Role Of Dynamic Contrast Enhanced And Diffusion Weighted MRI In Characterization Of Suspicious Breast Masses

Abstract

Conventional imaging modalities as mammography and ultrasound remain the method of choice for routine screening programs and is the first imaging aid, but conventional assessment have well-known limitations, such as inaccurate differentiation between benign and malignant lesions and estimation of the size of malignant tumors also, there is limitation in differentiation between recurrence and scar tissue in post operative cases. The sensitivity of breast MRI for the detection of cancer is the greatest of all imaging techniques and when the findings of conventional imaging are inconclusive (i.e. BI-RADS 0),MRI can be used as a problem-solving modality, it is also better at identifying the true extent of cancer when multifocal disease or ductal carcinoma in situ is present. Diffusion-Weighted imaging (DWI), and DCE-MRI if further clinical evaluation is needed, represents an easy non time consuming complementary quantitative breast imaging sequence. In this study we found that most of breast malignant lesions (93.3%) show diffusion restriction, with low ADC value (mean ADC 0.87x10-3 mm2/sec) while most of benign lesions show facilitated diffusion(80.0%) with high ADC (mean 1.341x10