MRI to predict nipple-areola complex (NAC) involvement: An automatic method to compute the 3D distance between the NAC and tumor.
OBJECTIVES
To assess the role in predicting nipple-areola complex (NAC) involvement of a newly developed automatic method which computes the 3D tumor-NAC distance.


PATIENTS AND METHODS
Ninety-nine patients scheduled to nipple sparing mastectomy (NSM) underwent magnetic resonance (MR) examination at 1.5 T, including sagittal T2w and dynamic contrast enhanced (DCE)-MR imaging. An automatic method was developed to segment the NAC and the tumor and to compute the 3D distance between them. The automatic measurement was compared with manual axial and sagittal 2D measurements. NAC involvement was defined by the presence of invasive ductal or lobular carcinoma and/or ductal carcinoma in situ or ductal intraepithelial neoplasia (DIN1c - DIN3).


RESULTS
Tumor-NAC distance was computed on 95/99 patients (25 NAC+), as three tumors were not correctly segmented (sensitivity = 97%), and 1 NAC was not detected (sensitivity = 99%). The automatic 3D distance reached the highest area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve (0.830) with respect to the manual axial (0.676), sagittal (0.664), and minimum distances (0.664). At the best cut-off point of 21 mm, the 3D distance obtained sensitivity = 72%, specificity = 80%, positive predictive value = 56%, and negative predictive value = 89%.


CONCLUSIONS
This method could provide a reproducible biomarker to preoperatively select breast cancer patients candidates to NSM, thus helping surgical planning and intraoperative management of patients.
['Giannini|Valentina|V|http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5052-8231', 'Bianchi|Veronica|V|', 'Carabalona|Silvia|S|', 'Mazzetti|Simone|S|', 'Maggiorotto|Furio|F|', 'Kubatzki|Franziska|F|', 'Regge|Daniele|D|', 'Ponzone|Riccardo|R|', 'Martincich|Laura|L|']
D001943:Breast Neoplasms D005260:Female D006801:Humans D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging D015414:Mastectomy, Subcutaneous D008875:Middle Aged D009558:Nipples
mastectomy breast cancer 3D automatic distance magnetic resonance imaging nipple-areola sparing tumor segmentation