Pharmacokinetic Parametric Mapping and Pixel Histogram Analysis for Benign and Malignant Breast Lesion Discrimination: A Preliminary Shutter-Speed DCE-MRI Study

Ian Tagge¹, Yiyi Chen¹, Xin Li¹, Elizabeth Morris², Alina Tudorica¹, Charles Springer¹, Wei Huang¹

Region-of-interest (ROI) biomarkers extracted from shutter-speed model (SSM) analyses of DCE-MRI time-course data have high specificity for breast cancer diagnosis. By pharmacokinetic parametric mapping and histogram analyses, this preliminary study of 16 patients with suspicious breast lesions shows that pixel-by-pixel analyses of pharmacokinetic parameters eliminate partial volume averaging effects of ROI analyses and further improve diagnostic accuracy.