Karl-Heinz Herrmann1, Pascal AT Baltzer, Alexander Rauscher2, Hartmut P. Burmeister, Werner A. Kaiser, Jrgen R. Reichenbach1
1Medical Physics Group, Institute for diagnostic and interventional radiology, Jena, Thuringia, Germany; 2UBC MRI Research Centre, Vancouver, BC
The complex valued combination of in-phase and opposed-phase data can improve image quality and lesion contrast in dynamic MR mammography (MRM). In diagnostic reading of MRM, descriptors like border sharpness are important morphological criteria for lesion classification. In this clinical evaluation, two independent radiologists rated four contrasts (conventional ip-subtraction, magnitude ip-op-subtraction, complex ip-op-addition and a maximum intensity projection (MIP) of these complex contrasts) regarding image quality and lesion border delineation. Both observers rated the complex MIP contrast as clearly superior to all other contrasts.