MR mammography permits more precise lesion assessment including ductal carcinoma in situ A correct diagnosis of occult invasion before treatment is important for clinicians This study showed the potential of MR mammography to diagnose occult invasion Treatment and/or aggressive biopsy can be given with greater confidence MR mammography can lead to more appropriate management of patients.

Purpose: We assessed the in‰uence of the menstrual cycle on background parenchymal enhancement (BPE) of the breast in the early and delayed phases of dynamic magnetic resonance (MR) imaging and the optimal timing of MR imaging of the breast in Japanese women.Material and Methods: We reviewed dynamic MR images of 165 consecutive women with regular menstrual cycles and divided the women into 4 groups by week of the menstrual cycle: 32 in Week One (Days 1 through 4 of the menstrual cycle); 46 in Week 2 (Days 5 through 12); 49 in Week 3 (Days 13 through 20); and 38 in Week 4 (Days 21 through 30). We qualitatively evaluated BPE of the whole breast in the early and delayed phases of MR imaging; categorized enhancement as minimal, mild, moderate, or marked; and calculated the rate at which signal intensity increased (＝SI post-SI pre/SI pre) in regions of interest in from the early and delayed phase to the before contrast administration phase to assess BPE quantitatively.Results: In both the early and delayed dynamic MR phases, BPE was signiˆcantly more extensive and stronger in Week 4 than Week 2 ( Pº0.01). Throughout the menstrual cycle, BPE was signiˆcantly stronger in the delayed phase than in the early phase in both qualitative (Week One, P＝0.0002; Weeks 2 through 4, Pº0.0001) and quantitative (Weeks One through 4, Pº0.0001) assessments.Conclusion: The optimal time to perform dynamic breast MR imaging in premenopausal Japanese women was during Days 5 through 12 of the menstrual cycle.

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We evaluated the degree of inhomogeneities of fat suppression by using the fully automated three-dimensional breast shimming technique (Image Based-Smart: IB-Smart) and manual setting of a rectangular parallelepiped shim (volume shimming) in MR mammography. Information on breast shape was collected from 9 patients whose images were insufficiently fat-suppressed. A breast phantom made of a

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