Repeatability and consistency of diffusion-weighted imaging parameters for breast cancer with mass and non-mass / 中华放射学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective@#To study the repeatability and consistency among different operators while different b-value DWI was used to detect mass and non-mass breast lesions.@*Methods@#Between December 2010 and October 2017, we collected 131 female patients (one hundred and thirty-three lesions) from Zhongda Hospital Southeast University, they were diagnosed as non-cystic lesion of the mammary gland by contrast enhancement MRI (DCE-MRI),were examined with DWI and confirmed by surgical pathology. There were 94 cases of mass lesion (96 lesions) and 37 cases of non-mass lesion (37 lesions). All patients were examined with DWI before surgery,80 patients were examined with b-value of 0, 400, 800 and 1 000 s/mm2, there were 51 tumor lesions and 29 non-tumor lesions;53 patients were examined with b-value of 0, 400, 800 and 1 200,1 600 s/mm2,there were 45 tumor lesions and 8 non-tumor lesions. Two radiologists with the same qualifications used double-blind reading to measure ADC values. Paired t test was used to compare the differences in measurement parameters between the two physicians. The repeatability of data between the two physicians was analyzed by intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) and Cronbach α coefficients. The consistency of data between the two physicians was evaluated by Bland-Altman analysis.@*Results@#In different b values (0,400,800,1 200,1 600 s/mm2), the ADC value of non-mass type breast cancer and mass type breast cancer was no statistically significance between the two operators (P>0.05).The ICC of the ADC values of the non-mass breast lesion under the different b values measured by 2 physicians were 0.72, 0.78, 0.87, 0.76, 0.74, and the repeatability was good or very good; The Cronbach α coefficients are 0.83, 0.88, 0.93, 0.86, 0.85, and the reliability is high. The ICC of the ADC values of the mass breast lesion under the different b values measured by 2 physicians were 0.88,0.95,0.97,0.93,0.91, and the repeatability was very good. the Cronbach α coefficients were 0.94,0.97,0.99,0.96,0.95, and the reliability was high. The results of the Bland-Altman image analysis showed that the ADC values of non-mass and mass lesion detected by different operators in different b values have good consistency. In different b values, there were 97.3% (36/37), 94.6% (35/37), 93.1% (27/29),8/8 and 8/8 points within the 95% consistency limit of non-mass breast lesions; there were 97.9% (94/96), 94.8% (91/96), 92.2% (47/51), 95.6% (43/45), 93.3% (42/45) within the 95% consistency limit of mass breast lesions.@*Conclusion@#The ADC values were measured under different b values, and different operators had favarable repeatability and consistency for different lesions of different types of breast cancer.