SIGNAL TIME-RELATION OF BENIGN AND MALIGNANT LESIONS IN DYNAMIC 2D-MR IMAGING OF THE BREAST

In a retrospective study of 400 dynamic MR examinations of the breast the signal/time ratio of 62 histopathologically correlated lesions (19 benign, 42 malignant) was evaluated. Points of evaluation were initial signal enhancement (1st and 2nd minute), post-initial signal appearance (2nd to 5th minute) and signal distribution (homogeneous, marginal). Based on these criteria, a point system was defined to help in the assessment of lesions in dynamic breast-MR imaging. The overall sensitivity of this method was 95.3%, the specificity to 89.5% and the accuracy to 93.5%. Pitfalls resulted in two cases of non-invasive carcinoma and in two patients with fibroadenoma.