Abbreviated Breast MRI Protocols in the Screening of High-Risk Females

Abstract

Abstract Background Standard MRI breast more often than not, have lengthy protocols that make them much more expensive and time-consuming. And in spite its great potential for early detection of breast cancer in high-risk females, its wide application remains difficult, therefore the use of abbreviated MRI protocols in breast cancer screening is introduced. Results This study was done on high-risk women with a lifetime risk of over 20%. The majority of the examinations were performed on women with previous history of breast cancer (63.3%), while 36.7% had moderate to high family history. An abbreviated protocol was created form the sequences obtained from the full diagnostic protocol, which consisted of a pre-contrast T1, post-contrast T1, subtraction and MIP images. On MRI examination using the conventional protocol, 36% of the women in our study were diagnosed with breast mass lesions, of which 20% were malignant masses. Benign findings, whether mass or non-mass lesions constitutes of a total of 50.1%, and about 26.7% were normal. All the malignant lesions were identified on the abbreviated protocol by the designated reader after review of the clinical history. So, the cancer detection rate in our study using the abbreviated MRI protocols revealed a Kappa agreement test of 1.000, i.e., perfect agreement with the conventional protocols for the participant females. Conclusion The use of abbreviated MRI breast is feasible without compromising the cancer detection rate compared to a full protocol. It also achieved a significant reduction in scanning time, interpretation time, and total cost of the study, proving its efficacy and making it a more accessible first line of screening high-risk females.