Assessment of Four Different DWI Pulse Sequences Used for Breast Imaging

Martin D. Pickles¹, Peter Gibbs¹, Julie Pounder¹, Lindsay W. Turnbull¹

DWI of the breast can be problematic since a large FOV is required over non-uniform tissue which includes a large amounts of air. A variety of different pulse sequences are available. In this work we investigate which of four diffusion schemes is best suited to breast DWI by undertaking both phantom and in vivo SNR and GSR tests in conjunction with qualitative assessment of in vivo image quality. The results of this study identified that in those schemes that utilise an IR pulse to null the fat signal a statistically significantly superior image quality was noted.