Comparison of Ultrafast Dynamic Contrast-Enhanced (DCE) MRI with Conventional DCE MRI in the Morphological Assessment of Malignant Breast Lesions

Ultrafast (UF) dynamic contrast-enhanced (DCE)-MRI offers the potential for a faster and, therefore, less expensive examination of breast lesions; however, there are no reports that have evaluated whether UF DCE-MRI can be used the same as conventional DCE-MRI in the reading of morphological information. This study evaluated the agreement in morphological information obtained from malignant breast mass lesions between UF DCE-MRI and conventional DCE-MRI. UF DCE-MRI data were obtained over the first 60 s post-contrast injection, followed by the conventional DCE images. Two readers evaluated the size and morphology of the lesions in the final phase of the UF DCE-MRI and the early phase of the conventional DCE-MRI. Inter-method agreement in morphological information was evaluated for the two readers using the intraclass correlation coefficient for size, and the kappa statistics for the morphological descriptors. Differences in the proportion of each descriptor were examined using Fisher’s test of independence. Most inter-method agreements were higher than substantial. UF DCE-MRI showed a circumscribed margin and homogeneous enhancement more often than conventional imaging. However, the percentages of readings showing the same morphology assessment between the UF DCE-MRI and conventional DCE-MRI were 71.2% (136/191) for Reader 1 and 69.1% (132/191) for Reader 2. We conclude that UF DCE-MRI may replace conventional DCE-MRI to evaluate the morphological information of malignant breast mass lesions.