Diagnostic efficacy of the diffusion weighted imaging in the characterization of different types of breast lesions

Abstract

Despite the lower diagnostic accuracy of DWI in NMEs, it could be helpful in the characterization of suspicious breast lesions of both mass and NME types.

Assessment and quantification of sources of variability in breast apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) measurements at diffusion weighted imaging

“…For these reasons, measurement of ADC across the entire visible region of restricted diffusion are likely to be more reproducible than ADC min , particularly in follow up studies, even if potentially important information on tumor heterogeneity is obscured. Currently there is no consensus as to whether ADC values should be averaged across the lesion area on one slice or minimum ADC values within a lesion should be reported and there are a number of studies reporting both methods [21][22][23][24]. Studies reporting ADC min used various ROI sizes, with some reporting only minimum pixel value.…”

Diffusion‐weighted imaging and 18F‐fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography/computed tomography in breast cancer: Correlation of the apparent diffusion coefficient and maximum standardized uptake values with prognostic factors

“…However, we had fewer large tumors in our study compared with that of Razek et al In addition, the low b‐values of 200 and 400 s/mm 2 used in their study could have affected the results. Kul et al recently reported that ADC values of the masses were independent of size.…”

Can unenhanced breast MRI be used to decrease negative biopsy rates?

“…Therefore, previous studies using different scanning parameters reported different cutoff values for the discrimination of malignant and benign tumors (13,(21)(22)(23). In our practice, we routinely apply DWI as a part of our standard breast MRI protocol and as ADC threshold we use 0.90 ×10 -3 mm 2 /s, which is the cutoff value that was obtained from our previous DWI study (15). We also used this cutoff value in our present prospective study, and it provided good discrimination between malignant and benign masses.…”

“…At least three measurements were performed for each mass and the lowest mean value was selected. We used 0.90×10 -3 mm 2 /s as the ADC cutoff value that was obtained from our previous DWI study of 285 cases (124 benign and 161 malignant tumors) (15).…”