The value of dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI in differentiating triple-negative breast cancer from other subtypes

Abstract

Background: Breast cancer is a broad spectrum disease, including tumors showing different clinical, pathologic, molecular, and imaging features. Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) has an extra aggressive clinical course and poor prognosis being considered a diagnostic challenge to breast radiologists, yet it presented quite a lot of predictors on DCE-MRI; these could be valuable in identifying TNBC from other breast cancer subtypes. In this study, we aimed at assessing the DCE-MRI features of triple-negative breast cancer in comparison to other subtypes of breast cancer. Results: There was a significant difference between both groups regarding the internal enhancement pattern of mass lesions (P value 0.001), as well as intratumoral bright signal intensity on T2-weighted images (P value < 0.001). However, most of the breast cancer subtypes in this study showed malignant pattern kinetic curves type II and III showing no significant difference (P value 0.673). Conclusion: TNBC presented several features with significant differences from other breast cancer molecular subtypes on DCE-MRI including the shape of the lesion and pattern of enhancement as well as high T2 signal intensity, thus improving the diagnosis of TNBC.