Publications by authors named "Plewes D"

Annual breast magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) plus mammography is the standard of care for screening women with inherited mutations. However, long-term breast cancer-related mortality with screening is unknown. Between 1997 and June 2011, 489 previously unaffected mutation carriers aged 25 to 65 years were screened with annual MRI plus mammography on our study.

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A three-axis magnetometer is used to measure the precession angle of a small Foucault pendulum of 65.4 cm length and period 1.623 s.

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Breast MRI is frequently performed prior to breast conserving surgery in order to assess the location and extent of the lesion. Ideally, the surgeon should also be able to use the image information during surgery to guide the excision and this requires that the MR image is co-registered to conform to the patient's position on the operating table. Recent progress in MR imaging techniques has made it possible to obtain high quality images of the patient in the supine position which significantly reduces the complexity of the registration task.

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Purpose: To investigate the tolerability and technical feasibility of performing endorectal MR elastography (eMRE) in human volunteers within the representative age group commonly affected by prostate cancer.

Materials And Methods: Endorectal MRE was conducted on seven volunteers in a 1.5 Tesla (T) MR imager using a rigid endorectal coil.

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Purpose: To evaluate a magnetic resonance (MR)/ultrasound (US) coregistration system with US used in follow-up diagnostic studies of lesions originally identified by MR imaging.

Materials And Methods: A single-center prospective study enrolled 21 consecutive patients (age, 64.0 y±7.

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Article Synopsis
  • BRCA1/2 mutation carriers are advised to undergo MRI screening for breast cancer due to their high cancer risk and the MRI's effectiveness in detecting invasive cancers.
  • Clinical studies reveal notable differences in breast cancer traits between BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations, suggesting distinct screening guidelines may be needed.
  • Research indicates significant mortality reductions with MRI screening and highlights the necessity for tailored screening approaches for different mutation types, especially for those under 40.
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Background: The addition of breast magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to screening mammography for women with BRCA mutations significantly increases sensitivity, but there is little data on clinical outcomes. We report screening performance, cancer stage, distant recurrence rate, and breast cancer-specific mortality in our screening study.

Methods: From 1997 to 2009, 496 women aged 25 to 65 years with a known BRCA1/2 mutation, of whom 380 had no previous cancer history, were enrolled in a prospective screening trial that included annual MRI and mammography.

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This article is based on an introductory lecture given for the past many years during the "MR Physics and Techniques for Clinicians" course at the Annual Meeting of the ISMRM. This introduction is not intended to be a comprehensive overview of the field, as the subject of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) physics is large and complex. Rather, it is intended to lay a conceptual foundation by which magnetic resonance image formation can be understood from an intuitive perspective.

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Purpose: To achieve high-quality unilateral supine breast magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) as a step to facilitate image aiding of clinical applications, which are often performed in the supine position. Contrast-enhanced breast MRI is a powerful tool for the diagnosis of cancer. However, prone patient positioning typically used for breast MRI hinders its use for image aiding.

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Fast imaging applications in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) frequently involve undersampling of k-space data to achieve the desired temporal resolution. However, high temporal resolution images generated from undersampled data suffer from aliasing artifacts. In radial k-space sampling, this manifests as undesirable streaks that obscure image detail.

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The objectives of this study were to evaluate the feasibility of using a rigid radio-frequency receiver endorectal coil for intracavitary prostate magnetic resonance elastography (MRE) and to demonstrate the capability of this technique for generating stiffness maps over a typical prostate volume. An endorectal coil is currently used to help improve the signal-to-noise ratio of images acquired with multiparametric magnetic resonance imaging. We propose that this same coil could also serve to generate shear waves in the prostate gland during imaging, opening up the possibility of incorporating prostate stiffness characterization into multiparametric magnetic resonance imaging.

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Purpose: The sensitivity of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for breast cancer screening exceeds that of mammography. If MRI screening reduces mortality in women with a BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation, it is expected that the incidence of advanced-stage breast cancers should be reduced in women undergoing MRI screening compared with those undergoing conventional screening.

Patients And Methods: We followed 1,275 women with a BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation for a mean of 3.

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Although magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is much more sensitive than mammography for detecting early invasive breast cancer, in many high-risk screening studies MRI was less sensitive than mammography for detecting ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS). We reviewed our experience detecting DCIS in our single center study of annual MRI, mammography, ultrasound and clinical breast examination (CBE) for screening very high-risk women. All cases of DCIS±microinvasion and invasive cancer were compared in two time frames: before (period A) and after (period B) July 2001-when we acquired expertise in the detection of DCIS with MRI-with respect to patient demographics, method of detection, and rates of detection of invasive cancer and DCIS.

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Imaging of the microvasculature is often performed using contrast agents in combination with either ultrasound (US) or magnetic resonance (MR) imaging. Contrast agents are used to enhance medical imaging by highlighting microvascular properties and function. Dynamic signal changes arising from the passage of contrast agents through the microvasculature can be used to characterize different pathologies; however, comparisons across modalities are difficult due to differences in the interactions of contrast agents with the microvasculature.

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Tissue stiffness is known to undergo alterations when affected by prostate cancer and may serve as an indicator of the disease. Stiffness measurements can be made with magnetic resonance elastography performed using a transurethral actuator to generate shear waves in the prostate gland. The goal of this study was to help determine the imaging requirements of transurethral magnetic resonance elastography and to evaluate whether the spatial and stiffness resolution of this technique overlapped with the requirements for prostate cancer detection.

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Purpose: To evaluate three multicoil breast arrays for both conventional and SENSE-accelerated imaging.

Materials And Methods: Two commercially available 8-element coils and a prototype 16-element coil were compared. One 8-element array had adjustable coils located next to the breast tissue and the other had a fixed coil arrangement; both were designed to allow parallel imaging in the left-right direction.

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MR acoustic radiation force (ARF) imaging was developed for measuring tiSsue elastic properties using focused ultrasound to deliver a localized tissue motion. In this study, an imaging ultrasound transducer was mounted on the focused ultrasound transducer and ultrasound motion tracking was performed simultaneously to MR ARF imaging to validate the measurement results. In vivo studies on rabbit thigh muscle were performed and results showed a general agreement between the two modalities (slope=0.

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Conventional approaches for MR elastography (MRE) using surface drivers have difficulty achieving sufficient shear wave propagation in the prostate gland due to attenuation. In this study we evaluate the feasibility of generating shear wave propagation in the prostate gland using a transurethral device. A novel transurethral actuator design is proposed, and the performance of this device was evaluated in gelatin phantoms and in a canine prostate gland.

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In this work computer simulations and phantom measurements are presented that show the effect of flow on in-plane balanced steady-state free precession images. The images were studied for various flow velocities, excitation regions, relaxation times, RF-pulse angles, and off-resonance frequencies. The work shows that flow-induced disturbances are present in the images, but can be reduced by the application of inhomogeneous excitation regions.

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Breast tumor diagnosis requires both high spatial resolution to obtain information about tumor morphology and high temporal resolution to probe the kinetics of contrast uptake. Adaptive sampling of k-space allows images in dynamic contrast-enhanced (DCE)-magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to be reconstructed at various spatial or temporal resolutions from the same dataset. However, conventional radial approaches have limited flexibility that restricts image reconstruction to predetermined resolutions.

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Article Synopsis
  • This study explores a new system that correlates breast MRI and sonography findings, addressing the challenges often faced in this area.
  • It involved 10 patients with a total of 13 breast lesions, assessing how accurately the system could pinpoint areas visible on both MRI and ultrasound.
  • The results showed that this new coregistration system is effective for accurately targeting sonography to match MRI findings of the same breast lesions.
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Article Synopsis
  • The text discusses the importance of an effective breast cancer screening approach for women at high risk, focusing on the role of contrast-enhanced MRI, which is known for its high sensitivity but variable specificity compared to mammography.
  • The study aims to evaluate the overall effectiveness of adding MRI to annual mammography screenings by analyzing various metrics like sensitivity, specificity, and posttest probability from a literature review of relevant studies.
  • Eleven promising studies were identified, highlighting differences in participant characteristics and screening techniques, with the aim of comparing the effectiveness of MRI and mammography alone or in combination using BI-RADS scores and biopsy results.
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Early detection of breast cancer is one of the most important factors in determining prognosis for women with malignant tumors. Dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DCE-MRI) has been shown to be the most sensitive modality for screening high-risk women. Computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) systems have the potential to assist radiologists in the early detection of cancer.

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