Clinical Application of Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Management of Breast Cancer Patients Receiving Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy
Figure 2
The DCE kinetics measured at baseline before treatment and after 1 cycle of chemotherapy from 3 case examples. From top to bottom, the maximum intensity projection (MIP) images of pretreatment, F/U-1 MRI after 1 cycle of treatment, and F/U-2 MRI after 4 cycles of treatment are shown. (a) A responder after 1 cycle of AC regimen, which shows a slower wash-in and a slower wash-out after chemotherapy. (b) A confirmed responder after 4 cycles which has not yet shown a good response after 1 cycle, but the change of DCE kinetic is similar to the responder in (a) thus indicating that it may be a responder. The follow-up MRI is performed 8 days after the administration of chemotherapy, which may be too early to show size change. (c) A nonresponder which does not show tumor shrinkage after 4 cycles of AC treatment, and the DCE shows a faster wash-in and a faster wash-out after 1 cycle of chemotherapy. However, despite the noticeable differences in the DCE patterns, the changes are subtle.
