Sunitha B. Thakur1,2, Nicole Ishill3, David D. Dershaw4, Jason A. Koutcher1,4, Elizabeth A. Morris4
1Medical Physics, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, USA; 2Radiology, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, USA; 3Epidemiology-Biostatistics, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, USA; 4Radiology, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, USA
We presented the first phase of an ongoing investigation aimed at establishing the clinical usefulness of diffusion weighted imaging and apparent diffusion coefficients (ADCs) for breast cancer diagnosis. ADC values of confirmed malignant lesions were much lower than those of benign lesions. Since ADC values are roughly proportional to cellular density, they represent a valuable biomarker for detecting malignant lesions. Histopathology was used as the reference standard. Although this study was conducted on a limited population, the findings suggest that the measurement of extracellular water content may be an additional feature that can improve MRI specificity and understand treatment changes.