Abstract:
Objective To investigate the correlation of apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) value of MRI diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) in breast cancer of mass-like and non-mass-like breast cancer with tumor molecular biomarkers.
Methods DWI of 68 breast cancer patients admitted to Zhuhai Integrative Medicine Hospital from January 2015 to January 2019 before operation was retrospectively analyzed, all patients were female, aged 34−72 (48.5±4.7) years, 49 case mass-like and 19 case non-mass-like breast cancer patients . Estrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR), human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER-2) and cancer antigen were expressed by immunohistochemical assay, and the molecular subtypes were evaluated. T-test was used to compared the ADC of tumor type and non-tumor type breast cancer, different biological markers and different molecular subtypes of breast cancer. The correlation between ADC values and molecular markers and subtypes was analyzed by Spearman level correlation.
Results The ADC value of mass-like breast cancer was significantly lower than that of non-mass-like breast cancer ((0.95±0.13)×103 mm2/s vs. (1.03±0.12)×103 mm2/s, t=2.193, P=0.023). The ADC values of 19 non-mass-like breast cancer patients with ER(−), PR(−) and Ki-67>14% were significantly lower than those of ER(+), PR(+) and Ki-67≤14% (t=2.742, 2.054, 2.323; all P<0.05), and patients with the HER-2 overexpression type was higher than other molecular subtypes (t=2.515, 2.336, 2.721; all P<0.05). The ADC values of 49 mass-like breast cancer patients with ER(−) and Ki-67>14% were significantly lower than those of ER(+) and Ki-67≤14% (t=3.291, 2.183; both P<0.05) and patients with the HER-2 overexpression type was higher than other molecular subtypes(t=2.493, 2.453, 2.512; all P<0.05). The ADC value of mass-like breast cancer was positively correlated with the negative expression of ER (+) and PR (+), and the expression level of Ki-67 (r=0.394, 0.360, −0.407; all P<0.05). The ADC value of mass-like breast cancer was positively correlated with ER (+) negative expression and Ki-67 expression (r=0.371, −0.397; both P<0.05).
Conclusion The ADC value of non-mass-like breast cancer is higher than that of mass-like, and the ADC value has a good correlation with the expression of molecular biological characterization.