Fibroglandular Tissue and Background Parenchymal Enhancement on Breast MR Imaging Correlates With Breast Cancer

OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the association of breast cancer with both the background parenchymal enhancement intensity and volume (BPE(I) and BPE(V), respectively) and the amount of fibroglandular tissue (FGT) using an automatic quantitative assessment method in breast magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). MATERIALS AND METHODS: Among 17,274 women who underwent breast MRI, 132 normal women (control group), 132 women with benign breast lesions (benign group), and 132 women with breast cancer (cancer group) were randomly selected and matched by age and menopausal status. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) was compared in Cancer vs Control and Cancer vs Benign groups to assess the discriminative ability of BPE(I), BPE(V) and FGT. RESULTS: Compared with the control groups, the cancer group showed a significant difference in BPE(V) with a maximum AUC of 0.715 and 0.684 for patients in premenopausal and postmenopausal subgroup, respectively. And the cancer group showed a significant difference in BPE(V) with a maximum AUC of 0.622 and 0.633 for patients in premenopausal and postmenopausal subgroup, respectively, when compared with the benign group. FGT showed no significant difference when breast cancer group was compared with normal control and benign lesion group, respectively. Compared with the control groups, BPE(I) showed a slight difference in the cancer group. Compared with the benign group, no significant difference was seen in cancer group. CONCLUSION: Increased BPE(V) is correlated with a high risk of breast cancer While FGT is not.