Background: Mammography is accused of having low sensitivity and specificity in dense breast parenchyma. Also, women with dense breasts show an increased risk of developing breast cancer. Breast ultrasound has been used for several years for a better characterization of breast lesions. Contrast-enhanced mammography and tomosynthesis are relative novel imaging techniques that have been implicated in breast cancer detection and diagnosis. We aimed to compare breast tomosynthesis, contrast-enhanced mammography, and breast ultrasound as complementary techniques to mammography in dense breast parenchyma. Results: The study included 37 patients with 63 inconclusive mammography breast lesions. They all performed contrast-enhanced mammography, single-view tomosynthesis, and breast ultrasound. Mammography had a sensitivity of 83%, a specificity of 48%, a positive predictive value of 68%, a negative predictive value of 68%, and a diagnostic accuracy of 68%. Contrast-enhanced mammography had a sensitivity of 89%, a specificity of 89%, a positive predictive value of 91%, a negative predictive value of 86%, and a diagnostic accuracy of 89%. Tomosynthesis had a sensitivity of 86%, a specificity of 81%, a positive predictive value of 86%, a negative predictive value of 81%, and a diagnostic accuracy of 84%. Breast ultrasound had a sensitivity of 97%, a specificity of 85%, a positive predictive value of 90%, a negative predictive value of 96%, and a diagnostic accuracy of 92%. Conclusion: Breast ultrasound, tomosynthesis, and contrast-enhanced mammography showed better performance compared to mammography in dense breasts. However, ultrasound being safe with no radiation hazards should be the second step modality of choice after mammography in the assessment of mammography dense breasts. Adding tomosynthesis to mammography in screening increases its sensitivity. Contrast-enhanced mammography should be reserved for cases with inconclusive sonomammographic results.

Background: Portal hypertension is a major complication resulting from obstruction of portal blood flow, like cirrhosis or portal vein thrombosis, that leads to portal hypertension. MDCT angiography has become an important tool for investigation of the liver as well as potentially challenging varices by detailing the course of these tortuous vessels. This information is decisive for liver transplantation as well as for common procedures in which an unexpected varix can cause significant bleeding. Results: This study included an assessment of 60 cases of portal hypertension (28 males and 32 females), their age ranged from 42 to 69 years (mean age = 57.2 ± 6.63). All patients were diagnosed with portal hypertension, underwent upper GI endoscopy followed by a triphasic CT scan with CT angiographic assessment for the screening of gastro-esophageal varices. CT is highly sensitive as compared to upper GI endoscopy (sensitivity 93%) in detecting esophageal varices. Gastric varices detected by CT in 22 patients (37%) compared to 14 patients (23%) detected by endoscopy. While paraesophageal varices were detected in 63% of patients and retro-gastric varices in 80% of patients that were not visualized by endoscopy. Our study reported that the commonest type of collaterals were the splenic collaterals, and we also found there is a significant correlation between the portal vein diameter and the number of collaterals as well as between the portal vein diameter and splenic vein diameter. Conclusions:Multi-slice CT serves as an important non-invasive imaging modality in the diagnosis of collaterals in cases of portal hypertension. CT portography can replace endoscopy in the detection of high-risk varices. It also proved that there is a correlation between portal vein diameter, splenic vein diameter, and number of collaterals.

Background Studying breast carcinoma is of great importance as it is the commonest female malignancy. Accurate preoperative assessment of disease characteristics and prognosis would be of great help in the diagnosis and treatment planning of breast cancer. The aim of this study was to evaluate the role of the apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) value in detecting the grading of invasive breast carcinoma prior to management. Results There was a significant difference between the mean ADC value of tumors of grade I and III (p = 0.001) and between grade I and II (p = 0.002). However, there was no significant difference between grade II and III (p = 0.979). High ADC values were associated with low-grade tumors. The mean ADC value of 0.93 × 10–3 mm2/s showed sensitivity 98%, specificity 100%, PPV 100%, NPV 83.3%, accuracy 98.2%, AUC = 0.994, and 95% confidence interval of 0.978 to 1.000. Conclusion DWI is a contrast-free modality that allows for both morphological and quantitative analysis. ADC value may not be the proper modality to determine the prognosis of breast cancer due to overlap values, yet it could be a good discriminator between low- and high-grade tumors and hence predictor of breast cancer cells that would respond to chemotherapy.

Background Pre-operative MRI examination is currently considered as an evolving tool for assessment of perianal fistula types, extensions, and complications to achieve proper treatment plan. Proper assessment of fistula activity can also have a major contributing role to the treatment plan, through deciding the type of prescribed medications, proper surgical approach as well as the proper operative intervention timing. Reviewing literature, only few studies have mentioned the importance of diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) sequences in diagnosing perianal fistula activity, yet many studies have discussed the perianal fistula activity assessment using other diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) sequences. In the present study, the main objective was to prove the MRI quantitative DTI sequences’ ability of diagnosing perianal fistulae inflammatory activity. Results This study was a prospective analysis in which fistular activity was confirmed by intra-operative findings (considered as the standard reference). The cases included in the study were divided into two groups, based on their surgical findings, positive inflammatory and negative inflammatory groups. Both groups were pre-operatively assessed using MRI imaging and additionally used diffusion weighted and tensor imaging (DWI and DTI) sequences by special post-processing quantitative assessment of DTI FA and ADC values. There was significant statistical difference between the mean ADC value of the PIA and NIA groups in the track, edema, ipsilateral and contralateral sphincter areas with P values (P = 0.000, 0.000, 0.002 and 0.000 respectively). There was also significant difference between the mean FA value of the PIA and NIA groups in the track, edema, ipsilateral and contralateral sphincter areas with P values (P = 0.000, 0.000, 0.000 and 0.008 respectively). Conclusion This study results revealed that FA are relatively lower in positive inflammatory activity lesions than in negative inflammatory activity lesions while the ADC values were relatively higher in positive inflammatory activity lesions than in negative inflammatory activity lesions and the differences were statistically significant having a fundamental role in the assessment of perianal fistula activity especially at the track area being of highest sensitivity and specificity. Unlike conventional MRI sequences which revealed only high specificity being a good negative modality.

Background: Breast cancer is undoubtedly the world's most frequent cancer among women. Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is a subtype of breast cancer that does not express estrogen, progesterone, or human epidermal growth factor receptors, yet its imaging is considered a challenge to radiologists having imprecise features. In this study, we aimed at defining the MRI characteristics of triple-negative breast cancer to validate its impact on management. Results: Most of the TNBCs in this study showed malignant pattern kinetic curves (types II and III), 87/104 (83.7%), and P value 0.673 (not significant), and regarding the type of lesion enhancement, 104/172 cases (60.5%) showed mass enhancement compared to 52/172 (30.2%) non-mass enhancement and 16/172 (9.3%) focus enhancement, P value 0.185 (not significant). As for the internal enhancement pattern of mass lesions, rim internal enhancement was predominant in TNBC mass lesions, 48/104 (46.2%), as well as intratumoral bright signal intensity on T2-weighted images, 108/172 (62.8%), P value 0.001 (highly significant). Conclusion: Triple-negative breast cancers (TNBC) are larger, better defined, and more necrotic than conventional cancers. On MRI, necrosis yields high T2-weighted signal intensity.