The utility of diffusion weighted MRI and apparent diffusion coefficient in characterization of breast masses

PurposeThis study aimed to emphasize the value of DW-MRI, ADC values in differentiation of various breast masses.Patients and methodsBetween “June 2013 to January 2015”, 50 consecutive patients with suspicious breast lesions underwent DW-MRI and ADC with the measurement of ADC values. All patients were examined with 1.5 Tesla MRI machine using breast coil. The images were obtained with b-values 0 and 750 s/mm2. The ADC values were calculated for breast lesions and axillary LNs. The results were correlated with the histopathology results which were taken as gold standard.ResultsIn the studied 50 lesions, 20 were benign and 30 were malignant. The most frequent benign lesion was fibroadenoma (16%) and the most frequent malignant lesion was invasive duct carcinoma (36%). The mean ADC value for benign lesions was 1.6 ± 0.33 × 10−3 mm2/s while the mean ADC value for malignant lesions was 0.84 ± 0.25 × 10−3 mm2/s. The ROC curve showed that the best ADC cut-off value between benign and malignant lesions was 1.02 × 10−3 mm2/s with sensitivity, specificity, PPV, NPV and accuracy of 90%, 95%, 100%, 90.4% and 92% respectively.ConclusionDW-MRI with ADC values measurement was considered a useful tool for accurate differentiation of various breast masses.