Potential Role of Multi b Factor Diffusion-Weighted Imaging of the Breast *

Diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) is characterized by extremely high contrast resolution, and it has been applied to diagnose early-stage cerebral infarction. When used to image the body, however, strong artifacts are created by the nonuniformity of the magnetic field. Recent development of MR technology has nearly overcome this obstacle and enabled the clinical application of diffusion-weighted imaging. DWI has shown great promise in the detection of any tumor type throughout the entire body. Regarding breast DWI, the potential role of apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) value in characterizing breast lesions has been reported. In the preliminary results, the ADC value may be an effective parameter in distinguishing between benign and malignant breast lesions because tumor cellularity has a significant influence on the ADC values. On the other hand, the VIBE (volumetric interpolated breath hold examination) sequence with iPAT (integrated parallel acquisition techniques), which allows high-spatial-resolution images with isotropic voxels to be obtained, improves the quality of breast MR examinations dramatically (Table and Figs. 1–3). Following this development, it is debatable whether DWI of the breast is useful or not in routine clinical MR examinations.