Earlier response monitoring strategy of breast cancer with longitudinal multiparametric MRI follow neoadjuvant chemotherapy

Motivation: The motivation is early assessment of pathologic complete response (pCR) after neoadjuvant chemotherapy in breast cancer. Goal(s): To evaluate whether the change in multiparametric MRI could help early predict the response to NAC. Approach: We analyzed the percentage change in wash-in slope (WIS), tumor ADC, and tumor size from that before treatment at each time point of 221 breast cancer cases, utilizing Student's t-test and the receiver operating characteristic curve. Results: The change in WIS demonstrated strong predictive performance for pCR, whereas the models incorporating the change of WIS, ADC, and size exhibited comparable predictive performance between each time point. Impact: This study is highly impactful, as it demonstrates that MRI biomarkers can dynamically predict the response to NAC, with the combination of kinetic and diffusion parameters enabling early prediction of treatment response.