Can Abbreviated Breast MRI Have an Impact in Assessing Post-Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy Response?

For the evaluation of patients who have had neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) for breast cancer, abbreviated magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) offers comparable assessment to full MRI for gauging treatment response, according to research presented at the Society for Breast Imaging (SBI) conference.

For the multicenter retrospective study, researchers compared abbreviated MRI and full MRI in 237 patients with breast cancer who had pre- and posr-NAC breast MRI. According to the study, 92 patients in the cohort had a pathologic complete response (pCR).¹

Here can see abbreviated MRI findings of partial treatment response for a 44-year-old woman with invasive ductal carcinoma. (Images courtesy of the Society for Breast Imaging.)

While emphasizing the need for further prospective research, the researchers found no statistically significant difference between abbreviated MRI and full MRI with respect to the mean area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) for predicting pCR to NAC (69.7 percent vs. 68.7 percent).¹

“(The abbreviated MRI) protocol can be used in the post-NAC setting for predicting complete pathologic response,” wrote Iris Chen, M.D., a radiology resident at the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) Ronald Reagan Medical Center, and colleagues.

The study authors noted a 39.8 percent mean max dimension of residual breast cancer for abbreviated MRI in comparison to 38.2 percent for full MRI.

“(There was) no significant difference in assessing residual disease between abMRI and full MRI, and between abMRI and pathology,” maintained Chen and colleagues.¹

Abbreviated MRI also provided an 80.1 percent accuracy rate for detecting lymphadenopathy, according to the researchers.¹

(Editor’s note: For related content, see “Abbreviated Breast MRI and Dense Breasts: What Emerging Research Reveals,” “Breast MRI Quantification of Intra-Tumoral Heterogeneity May Help Predict Response to Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy” and “Could Ultrafast MRI Enhance Detection of Malignant Foci for Breast Cancer?”)

Reference

1. Chen I, Linden O, Sayre J, et al. Efficacy of abbreviated breast MRI for the evaluation of post-neoadjuvant chemotherapy breast cancer. Presented at the Society for Breast Imaging (SBI) conference, April 24-27, 2025, Colorado Springs, Colo. Available at: https://www.sbi-online.org/events/2025-sbi-breast-imaging-symposium . Accessed April 24, 2025.