Classification of Breast Lesions Using Quantitative Dynamic Contrast Enhanced-MRI

Abstract

Imaging biomarkers are becoming important in both research and clinical studies. This study is focused on developing measures of tumour mean, fractal dimension, homogeneity, energy, skewness and kurtosis that reflect the values of the pharmacokinetic (PK) parameters within the breast tumours, evaluate those using clinical data, and investigate their feasibility as a biomarker to discriminate malign from benign breast lesions. In total, 75 patients with breast cancer underwent Dynamic Contrast Enhanced-Magnetic Resonance Imaging (DCE-MRI). Axial bilateral images with fat-saturation and full breast coverage were performed at 3T Siemens with a 3D gradient echo-based TWIST sequence. The whole tumour mean, fractal dimension, homogeneity, energy, skewness and kurtosis of Ktrans and Ve values were calculated. Median of both the mean and the fractal dimension of Ktrans and Ve for benign and malignant tumour show significant discrimination. Further, the median of skewness and kurtosis of Ve significantly vary between benign and malignant cases. In conclusion, the mean and the fractal dimension of both Ktrans and Ve and skewness and kurtosis of Ve for typical breast cancer, computed from PK parametric maps, show potential as a biomarker for breast tumour diagnosis either as a benign or malignant.