Pharmacokinetic Analysis of Dynamic Contrast-Enhanced Magnetic Resonance Imaging at 7T for Breast Cancer Diagnosis and Characterization

• Main Authors: R. Elena Ochoa-Albiztegui, Varadan Sevilimedu, Joao V. Horvat, Sunitha B. Thakur, Thomas H. Helbich, Siegfried Trattnig, Elizabeth A. Morris, Jeffrey S. Reiner, Katja Pinker
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2020-12-01
• Series: Cancers
• Subjects: breast cancer; ultra-high-field magnetic resonance imaging; quantitative pharmacokinetics; immunohistochemistry; molecular subtypes; proliferation rate
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6694/12/12/3763

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether ultra-high-field dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DCE-MRI) of the breast at 7T using quantitative pharmacokinetic (PK) analysis can differentiate between benign and malignant breast tumors for improved breast cancer diagnosis and to predict molecular subtypes, histologic grade, and proliferation rate in breast cancer. In this prospective study, 37 patients with 43 lesions suspicious on mammography or ultrasound underwent bilateral DCE-MRI of the breast at 7T. PK parameters (K^Trans, k_ep, V_e) were evaluated with two region of interest (ROI) approaches (2D whole-tumor ROI or 2D 10 mm standardized ROI) manually drawn by two readers (senior reader, R1, and R2) independently. Histopathology served as the reference standard. PK parameters differentiated benign and malignant lesions (n = 16, 27, respectively) with good accuracy (AUCs = 0.655–0.762). The addition of quantitative PK analysis to subjective BI-RADS classification improved breast cancer detection from 88.4% to 97.7% for R1 and 86.04% to 97.67% for R2. Different ROI approaches did not influence diagnostic accuracy for both readers. Except for K^Trans for whole-tumor ROI for R2, none of the PK parameters were valuable to predict molecular subtypes, histologic grade, or proliferation rate in breast cancer. In conclusion, PK-enhanced BI-RADS is promising for the noninvasive differentiation of benign and malignant breast tumors.