Since the publication of a March 29, 2007 article in The New England Journal of Medicine that showed how breast MRI helped detect cancer in the contralateral breast that was missed with mammography, more facilities have become interested in this modality, especially for high-risk women. In the meantime, new American Cancer Society guidelines advise using breast MRI for high-risk women, including those with BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations. Mitsuhiro Tozaki, MD, Director of the Breast Center at Kameda Medical Center, Chiba, Japan, supports that indication: “MRI is a very sensitive modality. The results are compelling.”


Addition to Conventional Breast MRI
Recent studies now suggest that when breast MRI spectroscopy is added to conventional breast MRI, specificity increases to nearly 90 percent. Dr. Tozaki has imaged 1,500 patients with breast MRI and 700 patients with the Siemens breast spectroscopy application syngo® GRACE. With syngo GRACE, choline can be detected in breast cancers, which is considered an indicator of the activity of breast neoplasms and the viability of breast cancers. Therefore, Siemens breast MRI spectroscopy, syngo GRACE, may aid to improve the specificity for tumor diagnoses and may be a helpful tool for therapy monitoring in patients with locally advanced breast cancer.

Tim® technology adds further benefits to MRI imaging in breast cancer patients: Thanks to its automated coil selection, breast spectroscopy and a whole-body exam for metastases can be done in one exam, without patient or coil repositioning. “Spectroscopy acquisition takes between five and seven minutes, whole-body imaging with MRI 35 minutes, and for MRI plus MRI spectroscopy, it’s 40 minutes. Acquisition with Tim is totally automatic,” Tozaki says. “I am also very positive about using MRI after chemotherapy for monitoring.”