[Usefulness of dynamic MR mammography for diagnosis of axillary lymph node status in breast cancer patient].

A retrospective study was performed to evaluate whether dynamic MR imaging is useful for the diagnosis of axillary lymph node metastases from breast cancer. Thirty-five patients with breast cancer were scanned and 147 lymph nodes were detected and compared with pathological nodal status. The parameters were the long axis dimension, the short axis dimension, the long-to-short axis (L/S) ratio, the shape, the contrast enhancement ratio (CER), the CER of lymph node-to-primary tumor (L/P) ratio.

Metastases in fatty liver: appearance on conventional spin-echo, fast-spin-echo, and echo-planar T2-weighted MR images.

A 71-year-old woman with liver metastases from colon adenocarcinoma in a severe fatty liver underwent T2-weighted MR imaging with conventional spin-echo (CSE), breath-hold fast-SE (BH-fast-SE), respiratory-triggered fast-SE (RT-fast-SE), and multishot SE echo-planar (SE-EP) techniques. CSE and SE-EP T2-weighted images showed the metastases as areas of high signal intensity. In contrast, RT-fast-SE and BH-fast-SE images showed them as areas of low signal intensity.

Overestimation ratio of hepatic lesion size on spiral CT arterial portography: an indicator of malignancy.

Purpose: To assess the reliability of the size-overestimation ratio obtained from spiral CT arterial portography (CTAP) and spiral equilibrium-phase CT (EPCT) in distinguishing malignant focal hepatic lesions from benign ones.

Methods: The CTAP images and EPCT images obtained five minutes after CTAP in 39 patients with focal hepatic lesions were retrospectively analyzed. Fifty-eight lesions (hepatocellular carcinoma [HCC], 33; metastasis, 10; liver cyst, 10; cavernous hemangioma, 2; adenomatous hyperplasia [AH], 2; focal nodular hyperplasia [FNH], 1) had their sizes measured on CTAP and EPCT images using the calipers on the CT console.