Breast cancer is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in Western women. Tumor neo-angiogenesis may be an MRI-detectable prognostic marker for cancer progression. Clinical practice uses DCE-MRI to detect cancers based on increased blood flow and capillary permeability. However, DCE-MRI requires repeated injections of contrast media; therefore we used time-of-flight MR angiography to measure the number and size of arteries feeding mammary glands with and without cancer, and demonstrated that blood vessels in and near mammary glands grew significantly as invasive cancers developed.
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