Objectives: To determine the added discriminative value of detailed quantitative characterization of background parenchymal enhancement in addition to the tumor itself on dynamic contrast-enhanced (DCE) MRI at 3.0 Tesla in identifying "triple-negative" breast cancers.
Materials and methods: In this Institutional Review Board-approved retrospective study, DCE-MRI of 84 women presenting 88 invasive carcinomas were evaluated by a radiologist and analyzed using quantitative computer-aided techniques. Each tumor and its surrounding parenchyma were segmented semi-automatically in 3-D. A total of 85 imaging features were extracted from the two regions, including morphologic, densitometric, and statistical texture measures of enhancement. A small subset of optimal features was selected using an efficient sequential forward floating search algorithm. To distinguish triple-negative cancers from other subtypes, we built predictive models based on support vector machines. Their classification performance was assessed with the area under receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) using cross-validation.
Results: Imaging features based on the tumor region achieved an AUC of 0.782 in differentiating triple-negative cancers from others, in line with the current state of the art. When background parenchymal enhancement features were included, the AUC increased significantly to 0.878 (p<0.01). Similar improvements were seen in nearly all subtype classification tasks undertaken. Notably, amongst the most discriminating features for predicting triple-negative cancers were textures of background parenchymal enhancement.
Conclusions: Considering the tumor as well as its surrounding parenchyma on DCE-MRI for radiomic image phenotyping provides useful information for identifying triple-negative breast cancers. Heterogeneity of background parenchymal enhancement, characterized by quantitative texture features on DCE-MRI, adds value to such differentiation models as they are strongly associated with the triple-negative subtype. Prospective validation studies are warranted to confirm these findings and determine potential implications.