Abbreviated and Ultrafast Dynamic Contrast-enhanced (DCE) - MR Imaging

Sep 23, 2026

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Abbreviated MRI and ultrafast dynamic contrast-enhanced (DCE) breast MRI are reviewed as strategies to reduce scan time while preserving diagnostic value in breast cancer care. Abbreviated MRI relies on limited acquisitions such as pre-contrast and early post-contrast images (and possibly T2-weighted imaging), supporting breast cancer screening and benign–malignant differentiation with performance comparable to conventional DCE. Ultrafast DCE MRI captures multiple early time phases to extract kinetic parameters, enabling lesion characterization, improved utility in marked background parenchymal enhancement, and applications including prognostic assessment and evaluation of neoadjuvant therapy.

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Introduction

Abbreviated MRI

Ultrafast DCE MRI

Clinical Applications

Magn Reson Med Sci 2025; 24; 315–331 doi:10 .2463/mrms. rev.2024-0158 Published Online: March 5, 2025 REVIEW Abbreviated and Ultrafast Dynamic Contrast-enhanced (DCE) MR Imaging Ken Yamaguchi1*, Kanto Ichinohe1, Mizuki Iyadomi1, Kazuya Fujiki1, Yutaka Yoshinaga1, Ryoko Egashira1, and Takahiko Nakazono1 The early detection and treatment of breast cancer is extremely important for extending patients’ outcomes. Breast MRI has high sensitivity for the detection of breast cancer and plays an important role in breast cancer diagnosis and treatment, but conventional dynamic contrast-enhanced (DCE) MRI may be too timeconsuming for breast cancer screening purposes. Abbreviated MRI is a technique that can be applied within a short time, as usually only the pre-contrast and first post-contrast images from the dynamic study or additional T2-weighted imaging are used. Abbreviated MRI may thus be suitable for breast cancer screening. In addition, its diagnostic performance for differentiating benign and malignant breast lesions is superior to that of breast tomosynthesis and comparable to that of conventional DCE MRI. The usefulness of abbreviated MRI for patients with a history of breast cancer and in clinical settings has been described, but the specificity of abbreviated DCE MRI is slightly lower than that of conventional DCE MRI. Ultrafast DCE MRI is a technique that obtains kinetic information by capturing multiple time phases in a short time scan in the very early phase after the injection of contrast material. Various parameters, including the maximum slope and time to enhancement can be used to evaluate kinetic information. Based on this kinetic information, ultrafast DCE MRI can differentiate between benign and malignant breast lesions. Since background parenchymal enhancement (BPE) is weak in the very early phase after a contrast media injection, ultrafast DCE MRI is also useful for identifying lesions in patients with marked BPE on conventional DCE MRI. In addition, ultrafast DCE MRI is useful for predicting the prognostic marker status of breast cancer, assessing the effectiveness of neoadjuvant therapy, examining MRI-detected lesions before surgery, and morphological assessments. Keywords: abbreviated, breast, dynamic contrast-enhanced, magnetic resonance imaging, ultrafast Introduction Breast cancer is the most common cancer affecting women and the fourth leading cause of death among women, 1 and the early detection and treatment of breast cancer are thus extremely important. Breast MRI has high sensitivity for the detection of breast cancer and plays an important role in breast cancer diagnosis and treatment, including staging,2–5 evaluating chemotherapy responses,6,7 screening among woman at high risk,8,9 evaluating patients with axillary lymph node metastasis with an unknown primary tumor,10 and problem-solving 1Department of Radiology, Faculty of Medicine, Saga University, Saga, Saga, Japan *Corresponding author: Department of Radiology, Faculty of Medicine, Saga University, 5-1-1 Nabeshima, Saga, Saga 849-8501, Japan. Tel.: +81-952-34- 2309, Fax: +81-952-34-2016, Email: [yamaguk@cc.saga-u.ac.jp](yamaguk@cc.saga-u.ac.jp) This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. ©2025 Japanese Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine Received: October 23, 2024 | Accepted: January 19, 2025 along with mammography and ultrasound examinations.5, 11 Although breast MRI has high sensitivity for breast cancer diagnoses, its specificity is not as high as its sensitivity.12 Therefore, in breast MRI, breast cancer is diagnosed both by evaluating morphology using high-spatial-resolution images after contrast-enhancement and by evaluating kinetic information based on time-intensity curves obtained from a dynamic contrast-enhanced (DCE) study. Early breast MRI studies revealed that breast cancer exhibits peak enhancement early after the injection o

FAQs

Why is breast MRI important for breast cancer detection and treatment?

Breast MRI has high sensitivity for detecting breast cancer and contributes to diagnosis, staging, chemotherapy response evaluation, and screening in high-risk patients.

What is abbreviated MRI and how does it support screening?

Abbreviated MRI reduces imaging and interpretation time by using only selected acquisitions from the dynamic study, making it suitable for breast cancer screening and maintaining strong diagnostic performance.

How does ultrafast DCE MRI obtain and use kinetic information?

Ultrafast DCE MRI rapidly captures multiple early phases after contrast injection, allowing extraction of kinetic parameters such as maximum slope and time to enhancement for differentiating benign and malignant lesions.

Sep 23, 2026

Uploaded by Terk