Jeon-Hor Chen1,2, H-J Yu1, S Bahri1, C-C Hsu2, F-T Hsu2, H-N Shih2, M-C Lin1, K Nie1, O Nalcioglu1, M-Y Su1
1Center for Functional Onco-Imaging, University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA; 2Department of Radiology, China Medical University Hospital, Taichung, Taiwan
An MRI-based method was used to measure the percent breast density and enhancement kinetics in the normal breast of patients receiving neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Patients with higher baseline percent breast density were more likely to show a higher reduction of breast density. The mechanism may be due to the higher vascular supply associated with the higher density, which allows more delivery of chemo-regimens to the normal tissue, hence causes more damage and a higher reduction of the fibroglandular tissue. The reduced enhancement kinetics in follow-up MRI studies in the premenopausal women may be associated with damaged vessels thus lower vascular supply.