1MR
Centre of Excellence, Department of Radiology, Medical University of Vienna,
Wien, Austria; 2MR PLM AW Neurology, Siemens Healthcare , Erlangen, Germany, Germany; 3Athinoula
A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology,
Massachusetts General Hospital,
Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States
This work presents the first clinical evidence that reproducible high-quality diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) of the breast can be performed at 7T in a large patient population. DWI with sub-millimeter in-plane resolution was obtained in 31 consecutive patients with histopathologically verified breast lesions. A significant reduction of imaging artifacts (i.e., geometric distortions, image blurring by a factor of 6.9) was achieved by combining readout-segmented echo planar imaging, parallel imaging, and additional B1-insensitive fat suppression. DWI of the breast, performed at 7T, with submillimeter inplane resolution provided exceptional image quality leading to excellent differentiation of benign and malignant breast lesions.