Digital mammography using iodine-based contrast media: initial clinical experience with dynamic contrast medium enhancement.

Purpose: We sought to evaluate the potential of dynamic contrast enhancement after the intravenous administration of an iodine-based contrast medium in full-field digital mammography.
Material and Methods: A protocol for image acquisition was established for contrast-enhanced mammography and the mammography unit (Senographe 2000D, GE Healthcare, Buc, France) changed as required. The effect of the protocol parameters on imaging was investigated. Subsequently, 21 patients with 25 suspicious lesions of the breast (10 benign, 1 borderline, and 14 malignant) underwent mammography with administration of an iodine-based contrast medium (Ultravist 370, Schering AG, Berlin, Germany), after approval of ethical committee as well as permission of German federal office for Radiation protection, and informed consent from each patient was obtained. Three sequential digital mammographic images of the respective breast were acquired after administration of the contrast medium at a dose of 1 mL/kg body weight and a flow of 4 mL/s. The postcontrast images were acquired 60, 120, and 180 seconds after administration. Subsequently, the precontrast image was logarithmically subtracted from the postcontrast images. Enhancement of the lesions was measured in absolute terms as well as relative to the enhancement of the glandular tissue. The subtracted images were evaluated for lesion depiction and dynamic contrast enhancement. Lesion-enhancement kinetics were compared with the histologic findings.
Results: All malignant lesions were identified on the contrast-enhanced images of digital mammography. Three of the tumors (2 malignant, 1 benign) were detected only by contrast-enhanced mammography and not by standard mammography. Dynamic enhancement curves of benign and malignant tumors in contrast-enhanced mammography look similar to the curves known from gadolinium-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging. Nevertheless differentiation between malignant and benign tumors based on the enhancement patterns cannot be directly taken over from magnetic resonance imaging, as suggested by our initial results. The results are somewhat better when tumor enhancement relative to surrounding glandular tissue is used instead of absolute enhancement.
Conclusion: The results of this preliminary study suggest that contrast-enhanced digital mammography is a potentially useful tool for the detection and the differentiation of benign and malignant breast lesions.