• Mariko Goto, Hirotoshi Ito, Kentaro Akazawa, Takao Kubota, Osamu Kizu, Kei Yamada, and Tsunehiko Nishimura.
• Department of Radiology, Graduate School of Medical Science, Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine, Kajiicho, Kyoto, Japan. gomari@koto.kpu-m.ac.jp
• J Magn Reson Imaging. 2007 Jan 1; 25 (1): 104-12.

PurposeTo compare the diagnostic performance of breast lesions by the enhancement patterns and morphologic criteria on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).Materials And MethodsBoth T1-weighted 3D gradient-echo sequences with high temporal resolution and high-spatial-resolution MRI were performed on 190 patients with a total of 204 enhancing lesions (144 malignant and 60 benign). The enhancement patterns and morphologic features of each mass and nonmass lesion were analyzed, and the diagnostic performance was compared.ResultsThe sensitivity and specificity of the morphologic criteria were statistically significantly higher than those of the enhancement patterns (sensitivity: P = 0.0012, specificity: P = 0.0003), and the A(z) values for the three observers were 0.900, 0.919, and 0.900. The diagnostic accuracy of the morphologic criteria for both types of lesions was superior, and the differences were statistically significant (mass: P = 0.0001, nonmass: P = 0.0389).ConclusionThe analysis of the morphologic features of enhancing breast lesions alone showed higher diagnostic performance; therefore, signal intensity (SI) time-course data may not be needed to diagnose malignant breast lesions.

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