Preoperative MRI of breast squamous cell carcinoma: diagnostic value of distinguishing between two subtypes

Abstract

Aim: To retrospectively analyse the clinical and MRI data of primary squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), particularly pure squamous cell carcinoma (PSCC) and mixed squamous cell carcinoma (MSCC).

Materials and methods: The MRI data and clinicopathological characteristics of 20 patients with histopathologically confirmed SCC of the breast, including eight PSCC patients and 12 MSCC patients, from multiple centres between January 2013 and December 2020 were analysed retrospectively.

Results: Nine of 12 patients in the MSCC group showed hyperintensity on T1-weighted imaging (WI), while this feature was not observed in the PSCC group (p=0.001). Most of the PSCC group showed rim enhancement, whereas most of the MSCC group showed heterogeneous enhancement (p=0.007). In addition, there was no significant difference in the thickness of the rim enhancement and the percentage of necrotic components in the tumours between the two types of SCCs of the breast (p=0.545 and p=0.662, respectively). Four patients (4/12) in the MSCC group had sentinel lymph node metastasis, while only one patient (1/8) in the PSCC group showed lymph node metastasis (p=0.603). Metastatic disease occurred in 25% of patients with PSCC and in approximately 41.7% of patients with MSCC.

Conclusion: The signal on T1WI and internal enhancement characteristics were the key features for differentiating PSCC and MSCC. Therefore, MRI phenotypes may provide additional information for the pathological classification of breast SCC.