Diagnostic value of combined use of abbreviated breast MRI and diffusion-weighted MRI in the prediction of breast cancer

Abstract

Purpose: The aim of this study was to compare the diagnostic performances of abbreviated protocol (AP) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), AP combined with diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI), and full dynamic protocol (FDP) in the differentiation of breast cancers from benign breast diseases. Materials and Methods: The total study population consisted of 68 patients who underwent breast MRI (1.5 Tesla) between January 2016 and December 2021 for the evaluation of suspicious findings on mammography or ultrasonography. All lesions were evaluated by 2 radiologists using AP, AP+DWI, and FDP. The reader sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy were analyzed using the “Chi-squared” test. The inter-observer agreement (IOA) between the Breast Imaging Reporting and Data System (BI-RADS) category assessments of the two readers was evaluated by using the “Kappa statistics”. Results: Sixty-eight patients with 72 lesions (31 malignant and 41 benign) were analyzed. The sensitivity/specificity for AP and AP+DWI for reader 1 was 67.7/90.2% and 80.6/87.8%, respectively, and for reader 2 was 67.7/92.6% and 70.9/90.2%, respectively. The sensitivity/specificity for FDP for reader 1 was 83.7/85.3% and for reader 2 was 80.6/90.2%. The IOA in the BI-RADS category assessment was almost perfect in all models between two readers (the kappa value was 0.907, 0.825, and 0.858 in AP, AP+DWI, and FDP, respectively). Conclusion: FDP showed greater diagnostic efficiency in the characterization of tumor biology as compared to AP and AP +DWI. Combining AP with DWI improved the diagnostic performance of MRI for the determination of malignancy.