Purpose
To explore the potential of in-vivo MR spectroscopy in evaluation of breast masses.
Methods and Materials
In 30 patients with histopathologically proven primary breast cancer,
we performed breast MRI using dedicated breast coil using FSET1W,
FSET2W,
STIR and Multiphase dynamic contrast enhanced sequence to look for additional lesions in the same as well as the contralateral breast.
In additional we performed MR spectroscopy of the known malignant breast mass.
MRS Protocol: The breast spectroscopy sequence is a spin-echo sequence with regional saturation bands for outer volume suppression.
•In our series we performed Single Voxel Spectroscopy (SVS).
•In Single-Voxel Spectroscopy (SVS),
the...
Results
We evaluated; the lesion morphology and signal intensity on T1W,
T2W and STIR images and perfusion characteristics with parametric mapping and time intensity curves.
We also evaluated the spectroscopy findings of the proven malignant breast masses and the additional lesions that were diagnosed as possibly malignant based on MRI characteristics.
A total of 35 lesions were identified,
33 of them were malignant ( 2 patients had additional lesions,
confirmed on histopathology) and 2 were classified as benign based on morphology and contrast kinetics,
the lesions...
Conclusion
Discussion
• The known limitation of MRS is that it provides the metabolic composition of a given voxel,
which may include more than one type of tissue,
for example in breast cancer; the voxel on occasions,
includes in addition to pathologic cancer tissue,
normal glandular tissue and adipose tissue.
• The amplitude of choline peak is probably related to volume of pathologic tissue in a given voxel and hence the difference in the amplitude of choline peak,
depending on size of lesion.
•The absence of...
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