Abstract:
Objective To explore the relationship of synthetic MRI quantitative parameters with molecular subtypes and cell proliferation activity in breast invasive ductal carcinoma.
Method A retrospective analysis was conducted on the clinical and pathological data of 112 patients with breast IDC, who consulted at The Third Affiliated Hospital of Kunming Medical University from July 2020 to February 2022. All patients underwent synthetic MRI, and their T1, T2, and proton density (PD) values were measured using the ITK-SNAP software. Groups of molecular subtypes were confirmed based on the expression of estrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR), human epidermal growth factor receptor-2 (HER-2), and tumor proliferation antigen Ki-67. The parameters for the different molecular subtypes and Ki-67 expression status of breast IDC were compared.
Results The study included a total of 112 IDC lesions, including 40 Luminal A, 49 Luminal B, 8 HER-2 overexpression-type, and 15 triple-negative breast cancer lesions. The differences in T1 and T2 values between ER-positive/negative, PR-positive/negative, and HER-2 positive/negative groups were not statistically significant (P> 0.05). T1 and T2 values in the Luminal A group were lower than those of the Luminal B and triple-negative groups, while the T2 values in the HER-2 overexpression group were lower than those of the Luminal B and triple-negative groups (P< 0.05). There was no significant difference in PD values among the different IDC molecular subtypes (P> 0.05).
Conclusions T1 and T2 values of synthetic MRI show potential in distinguishing different molecular subtypes and cell proliferation activity of breast IDC, while the PD value has limited discriminatory value in this regard.