Non-contrast MRI for breast screening: preliminary study on detectability of benign and malignant lesions in women with dense breasts

Purpose The importance of breast cancer screening has long been known. Unfortunately, there is no imaging modality for screening women with dense breasts that is both sensitive and without concerns regarding potential side effects. The purpose of this study is to explore the possibility of combined diffusion-weighted imaging and turbo inversion recovery magnitude MRI (DWI + TIRM) to overcome the difficulty of detection sensitivity and safety. Methods One hundred and seventy-six breast lesions from 166 women with dense breasts were retrospectively evaluated. The lesion visibility, area under the curve (AUC), sensitivity and specificity of cancer detection by MG, DWI + TIRM, and clinical MRI were evaluated and compared. MG plus clinical MRI served as the gold standard for lesion detection and pathology served as the gold standard for cancer detection. Results Lesion visibility of DWI + TIRM (96.6%) was significantly superior to MG (67.6%) in women with dense breasts ( p