Catherine Klifa1, Julio Carballido-Gamio1, Jessica Gibbs1, Nola Hylton1
1Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA
We investigated quantitative measures of breast MRI tissue patterns. High breast density is a strong marker for breast cancer risk and mammography is currently the approved modality for breast density assessment but performs poorly in women with dense breasts. MRI provides very good soft-tissue contrast and 3D information on breast tissue content. We showed that women with similar mammographic densities may present very different tissue patterns on MRI. We defined new quantitative measures using breast MRI data of 50 normal volunteers and showed that a new MR breast tissue index may provide complementary information to MR breast density. Our new MRI quantitative measures could have applicability to improve breast cancer risk assessment techniques.