Evaluation of the Added Value of Advanced Methods for Breast MRI Diagnosis

The PI of this project was:

This project was funded by: UW Comprehensive Cancer Center

The term of this project was: August 2005 to December 2010

The number of subjects scanned during this project was: 25

The aim of this study is to determine if several new methods for doing breast MRI can more reliably tell a benign from a malignant finding than the MRI method that is currently being used clinically. Two scan sessions will be performed on subsequent days, shortly before or after a clinical breast biopsy. An injection of a gadolinium-based contrast material will be required during each of the two scan sessions. It is hypothesized that the following four advanced techniques will increase the specificity of breast MRI compared to diagnosis based on conventional dynamic contrast enhanced techniques: 1) PR-TRICKs with higher temporal resolution at the start of the scan (for pharmacokinetic calculations), 2) MR Spectroscopy (to evaluate metabolites, choline), 3) Blood Oxygen Level Dependent (BOLD) imaging (oxygen levels may vary between solid malignant and benign lesions, no difference between in situ cancer and normal tissues), and 4) Diffusion Weighted Imaging (DWI) (restricted diffusion in malignant tumors).