Mies A. Korteweg1, Suzanne C. E.
Diepstraten1, Willem P. Th. M. Mali1, Peter R. Luijten1,
Paul J. van Diest2, Ivan Dimitrov3, Wouter B. Veldhuis1,
Dennis W. J. Klomp1
1Radiology, University
Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht, Netherlands; 2Pathology, University
Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht, Netherlands; 3Advanced Imaging
Research Center, UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, United States
Lipid composition of excised healthy and metastatic sentinel lymph nodes of breast cancer patients at 7 Tesla was explored by 3D multiple voxel 1H-MRS and verified by pathology analyses as lipids are a potential discriminatory marker for malignancy. 7T 1H -MRS in this study correlates strongly with pathology and is able to non-invasively detect saturated, mono unsaturated and PUFAs, independent of the total lipid content Only the methylene and methine protons were significantly less present in metastatic than in benign nodes. There were no significant differences found regarding total lipid content or PUFA distribution between metastatic and benign lymph nodes.