A High Specificity Biomarker for Breast Cancer Diagnosis: Shutter-Speed DCE-MRI Discrimination Among Seventy Seven Suspicious Lesions

Wei Huang¹, Xin Li¹, Alina Tudorica¹, Elizabeth Morris², Yiyi Chen¹, Ian Tagge¹, Sunitha Thakur², Maayan Korenblit², Ya Wang², Zhigang Zhang², Jason Koutcher², Charles Springer¹

In a DCE-MRI study of 77 suspicious breast lesions, it is demonstrated that, for the purpose of benign and malignant lesion discrimination, the region-of-interest (ROI) pharmacokinetic biomarkers extracted from the shutter-speed model (SSM) analysis of the time-course data perform significantly better than those derived from the standard model (SM) analysis or conventional clinical MRI interpretations. The Ktrans difference, δKtrans (SSM Ktrans SM Ktrans), represents the strongest binary classifier with 88% specificity for 100% sensitivity. Parametric maps may allow even greater specificity.