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MR + PET highlight elusive triple negative breast cancers
July 24, 2013
The heterogeneity of breast cancer can make it difficult to capture, especially in cases where telltale receptor expression or tumor characterization are not involved. However, MR and F-18 FDG PET may be able to suss out the more obscure phenotypes of the disease, according to a study published July 17 in Radiology.
Marjan S. Bolouri, MD, from the departments of radiology and biomedical imaging at the University of California, San Francisco, and colleagues conducted a retrospective study of invasive breast cancer patients who underwent dynamic contrast material–enhanced (DCE) MR imaging and FDG PET/CT before treatment between January 2005 through December 2009 to determine their value in the assessment of advanced breast cancer, and particularly breast cancers that tested negative for both estrogen and progesterone receptor as well as overexpression of human epidermal growth factor receptor type 2, or triple negative (TN) breast cancer.