Carcinoma of the breast imaged by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR)

NMR has shown promise as a non-invasive and nonhazardous method of imaging the mobile proton distributtion (mainly water) on a small scale in both animal and human tissues (Mansfield and Maudsley, 1977) and more recently on a much larger whole-body scale (Mansfield, et al., 1978; Damadian et al., 1977). In this paper we report the first localization of a breast cancer by this technique in a simple mastectomy specimen from a 47-year-old woman. Following mastectomy the specimen was rapidly transferred from the City Hospital to the Physics Department and the NMR scan started about 1½ hours following operation. The specimen measured some 15 cm in the long axis, one end of which was the axillary tail; it had a maximum thickness of about 4 cm at the centre tapering off to about 1 cm at the periphery. The surface of the specimen was marked with waterproof ink for identification purposes and placed flat in a plastic container. The slice thickness scanned included the whole of the breast; the images produced correspond to coronal scan projections of water and fat distributed in the whole breast.