Quantitative Apparent Diffusion Coefficient Metrics for MRI-only Suspicious Breast Lesions: Any Added Clinical Value?

Motivation: A simple, objective, and noninvasive approach is required to improve the diagnostic accuracy of MRI-only suspicious lesions. Goal(s): We aimed to assess whether using standard DWI sequences could increase the diagnostic performance of MRI for MRI-only breast lesions and reduce unnecessary MRI-guided biopsies. Approach: In our current work, we intend to use the quantitative assessment of the heterogeneity of the ADC value to explore the diagnostic value of conventional DWI sequences for MRI-only lesions. Results: Our results showed that quantitative ADC metrics based on large 2D-ROI measurements, particularly mean ADC values, exhibited superior performance over BI-RADS features in distinguishing MRI-only suspicious lesions. Impact: DWI quantitative parameters may significantly improve diagnostic ability of BI-RADS-based features of breast MRI and provide additional value for the discrimination of MRI-only suspicious lesions.