Study of water self-diffusion in healthy fibroglandular breast tissue

Abstract

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is an important imaging modalty available in modern medical diagnostics. Novel MR scanner software made available from the vendor was implemented on a clinical MR-scanner. MR measurements were made on fibro glandular tissue (FGT) in vivo from healthy volunteers and and also on prepared solutions of bakers yeast (S. Cerevisiae). The apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) and T2 values were calculated for both. An attempt was made to explain the signal behaviour in the yeast samples by using biophysical models. Additionally, across the range of echo times (TE) explored, ADC varied. Conversely, across the range of b-values explored, the value of T2 varied. These results suggest some dependence of ADC on TE and T2 on b-value. A slight change in ADC was detected when only varying the diffusion time in the experiment.