Keywords:
Breast, MR, Mammography, Ultrasound, Equipment, Imaging sequences, Technical aspects
Authors:
S. Harms1, B. J. Hillman2, G. Stevens3, R. Stough4, A. Hollingsworth4, K. Kozlowski5, L. Moss6; 1Fayetteville, AR/US, 2Philadelphia, PA/US, 3Bastrop, TX/US, 4Oklahoma City, OK/US, 5Knoxville, TN/US, 6Worcester, MA/US
DOI:
10.1594/ecr2012/B-0799
Purpose
Breast MRI has been shown to be a highly sensitive (71-100%) method for the detection of breast cancer.
However,
false negative examinations do occur. The relatively poor specificity (68% for the American College of Radiology Imaging Network (ACRIN) 6883 trial) of breast MRI,
compared with mammography (93-100%),
has been a major concern.(1) The false positive rates cited by prior studies are 32.2 to 40.6%(1-3).
False positives studies lead to further testing and unnecessary biopsies,
thereby increasing costs,
morbidity,
and patient anxiety.
False positive diagnoses result from the inability of MR to distinguish subtle cancers from benign findings that overlap in morphology and flow dynamics.
We hypothesized that improvements in spatial and contrast resolution might improve morphologic characterization,
resulting in lower numbers of false positive and false negative breast MR examinations than historically reported for breast MRI using whole body scanners.
The purpose of this study was to assess diagnostic performance of breast MRI at dedicated breast imaging centers using a dedicated 1.5 T breast MR system that employed high resolution,
high contrast spiral trajectory acquisitions.