Magnetization Transfer Imaging & Dynamic Contrast Enhanced Imaging of Breast Cancer at 3T

Samantha Lynn Heller¹, Linda Moy¹, Sherlin Lavianlivi¹, Melanie Moccaldi¹, Sungheon Kim²

Dynamic contrast enhanced (DCE)-MRI has been used for breast tumor assessment with promising results. But recent studies show that the specificity of DCE-MRI is highly variable. Hence, the purpose of our study was to evaluate the feasibility of using magnetization transfer imaging (MTI) to improve the differentiation between malignant and benign lesions. MTI has been used to study various pathologies associated with changes in macromolecular contents, such as demyelination in white matter. It has also been used to characterize breast tissues. Recently, it was reported that the MT ratio (MTR) of malignant breast cancer lesion was significantly lower than that of benign lesions at 1.5T. In this study, we investigated the feasibility of using both MTI and DCE-MRI for differentiation of benign and malignant lesions in the same cohort at 3T.