The comparison of high-resolution diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) with high-resolution contrast-enhanced MRI in the evaluation of breast cancers

We sought to investigate the performance of high resolution (HR) diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) using readout-segmented echo-planar imaging (rs-EPI), compared with high-resolution contrast-enhanced MRI (HR CE-MRI) in terms of morphological accuracy, on the basis of the Breast Imaging and Reporting and Data System (BI-RADS) MRI descriptors and lesion size. This retrospective study included the image data of 94 patients with surgically confirmed malignant breast lesions who had undergone high resolution diffusion-weighted imaging (HR-DWI) and HR CE-MRI. Two radiologists blinded to the final diagnosis independently identified the lesions on HR-DWI, described the morphology of the lesions according to BI-RADS descriptors, and measured lesion size. HR CE-MRI was subsequently evaluated using the same procedure. The inter-method agreement of the morphology was assessed using kappa statistics. Correlation on size was also assessed. Reader A detected 79 mass lesions and 37 non-mass lesions on HR-DWI and HR CE-MRI. Reader B detected 81 mass lesions and 33 non-mass lesions on HR-DWI and HR CE-MRI. Very high agreement (kappa = 0.81–0.89, p