Objectives: The aim of this study was to investigate the feasibility, the image quality, and the correlation with histology of dedicated spiral breast computed tomography (B-CT) equipped with a photon-counting detector in patients with suspicious breast lesions after application of iodinated contrast media.
Materials and methods: The local ethics committee approved this prospective study. Twelve women with suspicious breast lesions found in mammography or B-CT underwent contrast-enhanced spiral B-CT and supplementary ultrasound. For all lesions, biopsy-proven diagnosis and histological workup after surgical resection were obtained including the size of cancer/ductal carcinoma in situ, which were correlated to sizes measured in B-CT. Signal-to-noise ratio and contrast-to-noise ratio were evaluated for tumor, glandular tissue, and fatty tissue.
Results: Of the 12 patients, 15 suspicious lesions were found, 14 were malignant, and 1 benign lesion corresponded to a chronic inflammation. All lesions showed strong contrast media uptake with a signal-to-noise ratio of 119.7 ± 52.5 with a contrast-to-noise ratio between glandular tissue and breast cancer lesion of 12.6 ± 5.9. The correlation of the size of invasive tumors measured in B-CT compared with histological size was significant and strong R = 0.77 ( P < 0.05), whereas the correlation with the size of the peritumoral ductal carcinoma in situ was not significant R = 0.80 ( P = 0.11).
Conclusions: Contrast-enhanced B-CT shows high contrast between breast cancer and surrounding glandular tissue; therefore, it is a promising technique for cancer detection and staging depicting both soft tissue lesions and microcalcifications, which might be a substantial advantage over breast MRI.
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