Added Value of Quantitative DCE-MRI in Prediction of Breast Cancer Recurrence Following Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy?

Breast cancer patients treated with neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NACT) are at risk of recurrence depending on clinicopathological characteristics. This preliminary study aimed to investigate the predictive performances of quantitative dynamic contrast-enhanced (DCE) MRI parameters, alone and in combination with clinicopathological variables, for prediction of recurrence in patients treated with NACT. Pre- and post-NACT DCE-MRI parameters performed better than tumor size measurement in prediction of recurrence, whether alone or in combination with clinicopathological variables. Combining post-NACT Ktrans with residual cancer burden and age showed the best improvement in predictive performance with ROC AUC = 0.965.