Diffusion Weighted Imaging with Apparent Diffusion Coefficient on the Assessment of Tumor Heterogeneity for the Differentiation of Molecular Subtypes in Breast Cancer

The study evaluated the utility of diffusion weighted imaging with apparent diffusion coefficient on the assessment of tumor heterogeneity for the differentiation of molecular subtypes in a population of 91 patients with invasive breast cancer. The authors investigated the use of histogram analysis and visual assessment of tumor heterogeneity for the differentiation of breast cancer subtypes derived via immunohistochemistry surrogates. The results obtained demonstrated that HER-2 enriched tumors had higher ADC values than other tumor subtypes. It was also demonstrated that histogram analysis and visual assessment of tumor heterogeneity could not reliably be used to differentiate tumor molecular subtypes.