Dual-Phase ADC Modelling of Breast Masses in Diffusion-Weighted Imaging: Comparison with Histopathologic Findings

Abstract

Objective: To investigate the diagnostic value of dual-phase apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) compared to traditional ADC values in quantitativediffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) for differentiating between benign and malignant breast masses.Materials and Methods: Diffusion-weighted images of pathologically confirmed 88 benign and 85 malignant lesions acquired using a 3.0T MRscanner were analyzed. Small region-of-interests focusing on the highest signal intensity of lesions were used. Lesion ADC estimates were obtainedseparately from all b-value images (ADC; b=50, 400 and 800s/mm2), lower b-value images (ADClow; b=50 and 400s/mm2) and higher b-value images(ADChigh; b=400 and 800s/mm2). A set of dual-phase ADC (dpADC) models were constructed using ADClow, ADChigh and a perfusion influencefactor ranging from 0 to 1.Results: Strong positive correlation is observable between ADC and all dpADCs (ρ=0.80-1.00). Differences in ADC and dpADCs betweenthe benign and the malignant lesions are all significant (p