Microscopic diffusion properties of fixed breast tissue: preliminary findings

Purpose: To investigate the microscopic diffusion properties of formalin-fixed breast tissue. Methods: Diffusion microimaging was performed at 16.4T with 40-mm isotropic voxels on two normal and two cancer tissue samples from four patients. Results were correlated with histology of the samples. Results: Diffusion-weighted images and mean diffusivity maps demonstrated distinct diffusivity differences between breast tissue components. Mean diffusivity (MD) in normal tissue was 0.5960.24 mm2/ms for gland lobule (voxels containing epithelium and intralobular stroma) and 1.2360.34 mm2/ms for interlobular fibrous stroma. In the cancer samples, MD¼0.4560.23 mm2/ms for invasive ductal carcinoma (voxels contain epithelium and intralobular stroma) and 0.6160.35 mm2/ms for ductal carcinoma in situ. There were significant MD differences between all tissue components (P