• Yong Guo, You-Quan Cai, Zu-Long Cai, Yuan-Gui Gao, Ning-Yu An, Lin Ma, Srikanth Mahankali, and Jia-Hong Gao.
• Department of Radiology, General Navy Hospital, Beijing, China. guoyong@public.fhnet.cn.net
• J Magn Reson Imaging. 2002 Aug 1; 16 (2): 172-8.

PurposeTo evaluate the value of diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) in distinguishing between benign and malignant breast lesions.Materials And MethodsFifty-two female subjects (mean age = 58 years, age range = 25-75 years) with histopathologically proven breast lesions underwent DWI of the breasts with a single-shot echo-planar imaging (EPI) sequence using large b values. The computed mean apparent diffusion coefficients (ADCs) of the breast lesions and cell density were then correlated.ResultsThe ADCs varied substantially between benign breast lesions ((1.57 +/- 0.23) x 10(-3) mm(2)/second) and malignant breast lesions ((0.97 +/- 0.20) x 10(-3) mm(2)/second). In addition, the mean ADCs of the breast lesions correlated well with tumor cellularity (P < 0.01, r = -0.542).ConclusionThe ADC would be an effective parameter in distinguishing between malignant and benign breast lesions. Further, tumor cellularity has a significant influence on the ADCs obtained in both benign and malignant breast tumors.Copyright 2002 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

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