Background: The present exploration is aimed to determine whether
diffusion kurtosis imaging (DKI)-derived mean diffusivity (MD) and mean kurtosis
(MK) are possible parameters for the invasive breast cancer grading and whether
MD/MK is related to breast cancer clinical-pathologic factors including estrogen
receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR), human epidermal growth factor receptor
2 (HER-2) and Ki-67. Methods: Tumors from 108 invasive breast carcinoma
patients (45.6 11.2 years old; range, 20–84 years), diagnosed by
pathological examination between January 2016 and August 2017, were included. DKI
data (with b values of 0, 1000, 2000 sec/mm) and MD/MK were
measured. The expression of ER, PR, HER-2, and Ki-67 was evaluated by
immunohistochemistry. Results: It was found that MD was significantly
lower in grade III breast cancer than in grade II breast cancer (0.82
0.21 vs 1.17 0.24, p 0.0001), while MK was significantly
higher in grade III breast cancer than that in grade II breast cancer (1.00
0.31 vs 0.85 0.21, respectively; p 0.05). In
addition, MD was negatively associated with Ki-67 level (r = –0.39, p 0.05), while MK was positively associated with Ki-67 level (r = 0.56,
p 0.05). Furthermore, MD was significantly increased in ER and PR
positive expression group compared with ER and PR negative expression group,
while there is no significant difference of MK in ER and PR positive expression
group compared with ER and PR negative expression group. Additionally, there is
no significant difference of MD and MK in HER-2 positive expression group
compared with HER-2 negative expression group. Conclusions: These
results demonstrate that DKI has value in the evaluation on the
classification of invasive breast carcinoma. MD values were associated with
breast cancer clinical-pathologic factors. DKI can provide useful information in
the assessment of tumor proliferation activity.