An estimated 212,000 new breast cancer cases present in the U.S. each year. Several recent studies have suggested the value of annual screening exams for high risk women as early as 25 years of age. For this group of women, new studies are showing much higher sensitivity to breast cancer with MRI than other screening exams. For patients with a positive breast MRI that is not seen on any other imaging modality, MRI-based biopsy and wire localization procedures are very important. The overall goal of this work is to make these MR-guided breast procedures as easy to perform as ultrasound-guided breast procedures. There are a variety of open MRI scanners available, but open systems come with lower gradient performance and image quality than desired. This is simply due to the distance of the gradient coil from the breast. We are proposing three steps to improve MR-guided breast biopsy: 1) develop, compare, and evaluate the safety of two insert gradient coil systems for high performance open MR breast imaging, 2) develop improved breast MR acquisition software that exploits the capabilities of the high-performance gradient coil, and 3) evaluate the performance of the first of the two gradient systems in volunteer studies.
| Chen, Jing; Daniel, Bruce L; Pauly, Kim Butts (2006) Investigation of proton density for measuring tissue temperature. J Magn Reson Imaging 23:430-4 |
