Improved Noncontact 3-Dimensional Breast MR Elastography

Jun Chen¹, Roger Grimm¹, Kevin Glaser¹, Kugel Jennifer¹, Kay Pelletier¹, Richard Ehman¹

Women in the US have a 1 in 8 chance of developing breast cancer. Contrast-enhanced MRI has a high sensitivity for breast cancer, but low specificity. Breast MRE is a promising tool for detecting malignancies, but the requirement for direct contact between the driver and the breast has several disadvantages. We have developed a noncontact driver design to avoid these problems and a 3D GRE MRE acquisition to image both breasts simultaneously. The results from 6 healthy female volunteers demonstrate the feasibility of these methods and motivate future studies of MRE for breast cancer diagnosis.