Panoramic Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Breast With a Wearable Coil Vest

Background: Breast cancer, the most common malignant cancer in women
worldwide, is typically diagnosed by x-raymammography, which is an unpleasant procedure,
has low sensitivity in women with dense breasts, and involves ionizing radiation.
Breast magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is the most sensitive imaging modality
and works without ionizing radiation, but is currently constrained to the prone imaging
position due to suboptimal hardware, therefore hampering the clinical workflow.
Objectives: The aim of this work is to improve image quality in breast MRI, to
simplify the clinical workflow, shorten measurement time, and achieve consistency in
breast shape with other procedures such as ultrasound, surgery, and radiation therapy.
Materials and Methods: To this end, we propose “panoramic breast MRI”—an
approach combining a wearable radiofrequency coil for 3 T breast MRI (the
“BraCoil”), acquisition in the supine position, and a panoramic visualization of
the images. We demonstrate the potential of panoramic breast MRI in a pilot
study on 12 healthy volunteers and 1 patient, and compare it to the state of the art.
Results: With the BraCoil, we demonstrate up to 3-fold signal-to-noise ratio
compared with clinical standard coils and acceleration factors up to 6 4. Panoramic
visualization of supine breast images reduces the number of slices to be
viewed by a factor of 2–4.
Conclusions: Panoramic breast MRI allows for high-quality diagnostic imaging
and facilitated correlation to other diagnostic and interventional procedures. The
developed wearable radiofrequency coil in combination with dedicated image
processing has the potential to improve patient comfort while enabling more
time-efficient breast MRI compared with clinical coils.