Giovanni Di Leo1, Alfonso Fausto1, Robin de Nijs2, Franca Podo3, Marianne Vorbuchner4, Francesco Sardanelli1,5
1Unit of Radiology, IRCCS Policlinico San Donato, San Donato Milanese, Milan, Italy; 2Magnetic Resonance, Danish Research Centre, Copenhagen, Denmark; 3Cell Biology and Neurosciences, Istituto Superiore di Sanit, Rome, Italy; 4MR Spectroscopy and Oncology, Siemens AG Medical, Application Development, Erlangen, Germany; 5Medical and Surgical Science, University of Milan School of Medicine, Milan, Italy
We evaluated the total choline-containing compounds peak integral as a marker of malignancy at 1.5-T proton MR spectroscopy of the breast. Forty-five spectra were analyzed. A single-voxel water- and fat-suppressed PRESS sequence was used. Reference standard was histology or negative follow-up. At ROC analysis, the optimized threshold was 1.90 arbitrary units (au) for peak integral (0.90 sensitivity, 0.92 specificity) and 0.85 au/mL for peak integral normalized for the volume of interest (0.84 sensitivity, 0.89 specificity). In vivo proton MR spectroscopy of the breast has high diagnostic performance with a whole examination time < 40 min, including MR imaging and MRS.