Quantitative DCE-MRI Assessment of Breast Cancer Therapeutic Response: How Long Is the Acquisition Time Necessary?

Mohan L. Jayatilake¹, Xin Li¹, Alina Tudorica¹, Karen Oh¹, Nicole Roy¹, Stephen Chui¹, Wei Huang¹

Breast cancer patients underwent DCE-MRI studies before, after first cycle, at midpoint, and after completion of neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Ktrans and kep after first therapy cycle and their % changes (relative to baseline) provide early discrimination of pathologic complete responders (pCRs) from non-pCRs. Representative 10-min long DCE-MRI data from one pCR and one non-pCR were reprocessed with simulated acquisition time as short as ~ 3 min. It was found that DCE-MRI acquisition time of 5-6 min is sufficient for the purpose of early prediction of therapy response. Shorter DCE-MRI protocol reduces patient discomfort and minimizes motion artifacts.