Review of Prognostic Significance of Quantitative BPE Measurements
<b>Background/Objectives</b>: Background parenchymal enhancement (BPE) on breast magnetic resonance imaging reflects hormonal and vascular activity of fibroglandular tissue and is studied as a prognostic marker for breast cancer. This paper serves as a review that evaluates quantitative methods for BPE measurements for predicting treatment outcomes. <b>Methods</b>: PubMed was searched for papers on evaluating BPE with outcomes to compare, such as pathologic complete response, recurrence-free survival, disease-free survival, and overall survival, from 2015 to 2025. In total, eleven papers using quantitative methods to measure BPE were selected. <b>Results</b>: Quantitative results showed that BPE reduction during neoadjuvant chemotherapy and high pre-treatment/baseline BPE are linked to improved treatment response and reduced risk of recurrence. <b>Conclusions</b>: Quantitative assessment methods yield objective and reproducible prognostic information. Incorporating quantitative BPE measurements alongside tumor-focused imaging features may further improve predictive accuracy in clinical settings.
Authors
- Takouhie Maldjian
- Yihui Zhu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5928-279X)
- Emily Hunt
- Tim Q. Duong
- Jeremy Weiss
Institutions
- Albert Einstein College of Medicine (US)
- Montefiore Medical Center (US)
- Stanford University (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Diagnostics
- Published
- 2026-02-06
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.3390/diagnostics16030495
- Primary Topic
- MRI in cancer diagnosis
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00