Lisa J. Wilmes1, Rebekah L. McLaughlin1, Sumedha Sinha1, David C. Newitt1, Lisa Singer1, Evelyn Proctor1, Dorota Wisner1, Emine U. Saritas2, Ajit Shankaranarayanan3, Suchandrima Banerjee3, Bonnie N. Joe1, Nola M. Hylton1
1University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, United States; 2University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, United States; 3Applied Science Laboratory, GE Healthcare, Menlo Park, CA, United States
A high-resolution reduced field of view diffusion-weighted imaging sequence (HR-DWI) was optimized for breast imaging and evaluated against a standard (STD-DWI) sequence in patients with invasive breast cancer undergoing neoadjuvant treatment. Mean tumor apparent diffusion coefficients (ADCs) were not significantly different between sequences. However, the mean lower percentile ADCs were lower for HR-DWI, and this difference was significant at the early treatment time point. Of the ADC metrics evaluated, the pre-treatment 15th percentile HR-ADC was found to correlate most strongly with tumor volume change at the end of treatment. These results suggest HR-DWI may have value in characterizing treatment responses.