comparison between 18f-fdg pet/ct and diffusion-weighted imaging in detection of invasive ductal breast carcinoma

Objective(s): breast carcinoma is the most common type of cancer in females. this study aims to compare fluorine-18-fluorodeoxyglucose (18f-fdg) uptake pattern and apparent diffusion coefficient (adc) value for the detection of the primary tumour and axillary metastases of invasive ductal breast carcinoma. methods: this study included 40 breast carcinoma lesions taken from 39 patients. after staging by positron emission tomography-computed tomography (pet/ct) and diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (mri), breast surgery with axillary lymph node dissection or sentinel lymph node biopsy was performed. results: primary lesion detection rate for pet/ct and diffusion-weighted mri was high with 39 of 40 lesions (97.5%). the sensitivity and specificity for the detection of metastatic lymph nodes in axilla were 40.9%, 88.9%, with 18f-fdg pet/ct scans and 40.9%, 83.3%, for dw-mri, respectively. no significant correlation was detected between adc and suvmax or suvmax ratios. estrogen receptor (p=0.007) and progesterone receptor (p=0.036) positive patients had lower adc values. tumour suvmax was lower in t1 than t2 tumour size (p=0.027) and progesterone receptor-positive patients (p=0.029). tumour/background suvmax was lower in progesterone receptor-positive patients (p=0.004). tumour/liver suvmax was higher in grade iii patients (p=0.035) and progesterone receptor negative status (p=0.043). conclusions: this study confirmed the high detection rate of breast carcinoma in both modalities. they have same sensitivity for the detection of axillary lymph node metastases, whereas the pet/ct scan had higher specificity. furthermore, adc, suvmax and suvmax ratios showed some statistical significance among the patient groups according to different pathological parameters.