The research on distinguishing benign from malignant breast lesions by diffusion-weighted MR imaging

Objective To investigate the value of apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) of diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (DW-MRI) in distinguishing benign from malignant breast lesions. Methods ADC in 26 normal breasts, 24 malignant breast lesions, and 30 benign breast lesions confirmed by operation and pathology were calculated, respectively, and their differentiations in statistics were compared. The differentiations of different ADCs (b=1000-0, 500-0, 1000-500 s/mm2) were also compared. EPI (TR 2900 ms, TE 84 ms, thickness 5 mm) was used in order to acquire the imaging. Results There were significant differences among the ADC values of normal breast tissue, benign, and malignant lesions. The ADC of malignant lesions was lower than those of normal breast tissue and benign lesions, and the ADC of benign lesions was lower than that of normal breast tissue. There were significant differences among the ADC value of b=1000-0, 1000-500, and 500-0 s/mm2. The lower the b value, the higher the ADC. The sensitivity and specificity of ADC for the diagnosis of malignant lesion were 64% and 96.7% if the upper bound of 95% confidence interval was set as a differential level. Conclusion The differentiation of benign from malignant breast lesions by ADC is applicable, although the sensitivity is low, the specificity is high.