Characterisation of breast tumours by Fast Field Cycling MRI
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Characterisation of breast tumours by Fast Field Cycling MRI
IRAS ID
257715
Contact name
Valerie Speirs
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
The University of Aberdeen
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
Summary of Research
This study will focus on determining if Fast Field-Cycling MRI, a novel type of MRI scanner situated in the University of Aberdeen, can detect and characterise breast tumours.
The study will include 40 patients with different grades and types of invasive and non-invasive breast cancer, approximately 10 patients with benign breast conditions and 10 healthy volunteers. NHS Patients will be identified and recruited by their treating clinicians within the Breast Unit. Healthy volunteers will be recruited via posters distributed throughout the hospital and at the University.
Each patient will have one conventional MRI scan if clinically indicated along with a FFC-MRI scan. After full histological assessment has been completed the results will be collected.
Each healthy volunteer will undergo one FFC-MRI scan only. No further data will be collected from volunteers as this is mainly to get a baseline of what normal breast tissue should look like.
Data analyses will be performed using adequate statistical methods depending on the distribution of the random variables associated with the data. Previous results showed that Pearson correlation moments were adapted for most of the FFC-MRI biomarkers, but new information is likely to appear from that study that will need adequate analyses.
Summary of Results
Field-Cycling Imaging (FCI) is a new type of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Unlike normal MRI, FCI is able to change its magnetic field during the scan. The strength of the magnetic fields that FCI works at (0 to 0.2 Tesla) are also much lower than what conventional MRI use (1.5 to 3 Tesla). In MRI the type of contrast visible in the image and the origin of that contrast depend strongly on the strength of the magnetic field, so the information in the images we obtain using FCI are very different from what we get using conventional MRI.
There are advantages and disadvantages to using scanners like FCI which work at very low magnetic fields. A big advantage is that we don’t need to inject the patient with contrast dye, unlike with high field scanners. Although modern contrast dyes are generally very safe, they may not be suitable for patients with poor kidney function, so having alternative techniques available that don’t need to use them is very important.
Because the magnetic fields used are very weak, FCI scanners are less likely to be unsuitable for patients with metallic implants.
A disadvantage of FCI is that the resolution of the images from FCI is worse than conventional MRI, so the images are not quite as sharp, and the scan times can be longer as a result.
In this study we used FCI for the first time to image patients with breast cancer to investigate whether we would be able to identify the location, size and type of tumours in our images.
We scanned 66 breast cancer patients using our prototype Field Cycling Imaging (FCI) system. 22 of the scans were unsuccessful because of issues during the scan such as claustrophobia, false positives, or technical issues with the prototype. The remaining 44 scans successfully showed breast tumour lesions which were visible at magnetic field strengths as low as 200 micro Tesla. We were also able to distinguish between different types of breast tissue and have evidence that we were also able to distinguish between two different types of breast tumour – invasive and non-invasive. This is important as existing imaging modalities can struggle to identify some types of invasive tumour. FCI, therefore, may be a useful imaging technique for complementing existing diagnostic methods.REC name
North of Scotland Research Ethics Committee 1
REC reference
19/NS/0064
Date of REC Opinion
29 Apr 2019
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion