Role of diffusion MRI in characterizing benign and malignant breast lesions

AIMS: The aim of this study was to evaluate the role of MRI based diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) and the apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) for characterizing breast lesions in Indian patients. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This prospective analysis was performed between October 2006 and June 2008. It includes 200 patients between the ages of 16 and 80 years with solid breast lesions greater than 1 cm in diameter. Of these 200 patients, 80 underwent breast MRI with contrast and DWI. One hundred and twenty patients had only DWI as they had come only for sonomammography. A total of 280 lesions were detected. ADC values were calculated for all the lesions and the highest and lowest values of ADC for benign and malignant lesions were identified. Finally, we compared our findings with those of previous studies. RESULTS: Two hundred and eight lesions were categorized as benign and 72 lesions were categorized as malignant based on the ADC values. Based on previous data, lesions with ADC values from 1.3 to 1.5 mm(2)/s were considered benign where as lesions with ADC values ranging between 0.85 and 1.1 mm(2)/s were considered malignant. Two lesions whose ADC values were in the benign range were proven to be malignant tumors after surgery. This method of using ADC values for the detection of malignant lesions showed a sensitivity of 97.22% and a specificity of 100%. The positive predictive value was 100%. CONCLUSION: DWI is a useful technique for characterizing breast tumors, especially for lesions that cannot be adequately characterized by ultrasonography and routine magnetic resonance imaging.