Clinical usefulness of abbreviated MRI protocol in breast cancer detection

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-1-2024

Abstract

Background: The use of breast MRI for screening has increased over the past decade, mostly in women with a high risk of breast cancer. Abbreviated breast MRI (AB-MR) is introduced to make MRI a more accessible screening modality. AB-MR decreases scanning and reporting time and the overall cost of MRI. Objective: This study aims to evaluate the diagnostic efficacy of abbreviated MRI protocol in detecting breast cancer in screening and diagnostic populations, using histopathology as the reference standard. Materials and Methods: This is a single-centre retrospective cross-sectional study of 134 patients with 198 histologically proven breast lesions who underwent full diagnostic protocol contrast-enhanced breast MRI (FDP-MR) at the University Malaya Medical Centre (UMMC) from 1st January 2018 to 31st December 2019. AB-MR was pre-determined and evaluated with regard to the potential to detect and exclude malignancy from 3 readers of varying radiological experiences. The sensitivity of both AB-MR and FDP-MR were compared using the McNemar test, where both protocols' diagnostic performances were assessed via the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve. Inter-observer agreement was analysed using Fleiss Kappa. Results: There were 134 patients with 198 lesions. The average age was 50.9 years old (range 27 – 80). A total of 121 (90) MRIs were performed for diagnostic purposes. Screening accounted for 9.4 of the cases, 55.6 (n=110) lesions were benign, and 44.4 (n=88) were malignant. The commonest benign and malignant lesions were fibrocystic change (27.3) and invasive ductal carcinoma (78.4). The mean sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value for AB-MR were 0.96, 0.57, 0.68 and 0.94, respectively. Both AB-MR and FDP-MR showed excellent diagnostic performance with AUC of 0.88 and 0.96, respectively. The general inter-observer agreement of all three readers for AB-MR was substantial (k=0.69), with fair agreement demonstrated between AB-MR and FDP-MR (k=0.36). Conclusion: The study shows no evidence that the diagnostic efficacy of AB-MR is inferior to FDP-MR. AB-MR, with high sensitivity, has proven its capability in cancer detection and exclusion, especially for biologically aggressive cancers. © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Bentham Science Publisher.

Keywords

Abbreviated protocol, Benign, Breast cancer, Full diagnostic protocol, Malignant, MRI, Screening

Publication Title

Current Medical Imaging

Divisions

biomed

Funders

MOHE-FRGS [Grant no. FRGS/ 1/2019/SKK03/UM/01],Malaysian Ministry of Higher Education Fundamental Research Grant Scheme,Universiti Malaya [Grant no. GPF009C-2019]

Volume

20

Publisher

Bentham Science Publishers

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