Research Article Integration of DCE-MRI and DW-MRI Quantitative Parameters for Breast Lesion Classification Roberta Fusco, 1 Mario Sansone, 2 Salvatore Filice, 1 Vincenza Granata, 1 Orlando Catalano, 1 Daniela Maria Amato, 1 Maurizio Di Bonito, 3 Massimiliano D’Aiuto, 4 Immacolata Capasso, 4 Massimo Rinaldo, 4 and Antonella Petrillo 1 1 Department of Diagnostic Imaging, Radiant and Metabolic Terapy, “Istituto Nazionale Tumori Fondazione Giovanni Pascale, IRCCS”, Via Mariano Semmola, 80131 Naples, Italy 2 Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technologies, University “Federico II” of Naples, Via Claudio 21, 80125 Naples, Italy 3 Department of Diagnostic and Laboratory Pathology, “Istituto Nazionale Tumori Fondazione Giovanni Pascale, IRCCS”, Via Mariano Semmola, 80131 Naples, Italy 4 Department of Senology, “Istituto Nazionale Tumori Fondazione Giovanni Pascale, IRCCS”, Via Mariano Semmola, 80131 Naples, Italy Correspondence should be addressed to Antonella Petrillo; a.petrillo@istitutotumori.na.it Received 25 May 2014; Accepted 15 April 2015 Academic Editor: Vivian Barak Copyright © 2015 Roberta Fusco et al. Tis is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Objective. Te purpose of our study was to evaluate the diagnostic value of an imaging protocol combining dynamic contrast- enhanced MRI (DCE-MRI) and difusion-weighted MRI (DW-MRI) in patients with suspicious breast lesions. Materials and Methods. A total of 31 breast lesions (15 malignant and 16 benign proved by histological examination) in 26 female patients were included in this study. For both DCE-MRI and DW-MRI model free and model based parameters were computed pixel by pixel on manually segmented ROIs. Statistical procedures included conventional linear analysis and more advanced techniques for classifcation of lesions in benign and malignant. Results. Our fndings indicated no strong correlation between DCE-MRI and DW- MRI parameters. Results of classifcation analysis show that combining of DCE parameters or DW-MRI parameter, in comparison of single feature, does not yield a dramatic improvement of sensitivity and specifcity of the two techniques alone. Te best performance was obtained considering a full combination of all features. Moreover, the classifcation results combining all features are dominated by DCE-MRI features alone. Conclusion. Te combination of DWI and DCE-MRI does not show a potential to dramatically increase the sensitivity and specifcity of breast MRI. DCE-MRI alone gave the same performance as in combination with DW-MRI. 1. Introduction Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) applications such as dynamic contrast enhanced (DCE) and difusion weighted imaging (DWI) have the potential to provide noninvasive digital biomarkers with good spatial resolution and repro- ducibility suitable for early detection of breast cancer and for therapy evaluation [1–9]. In general, DCE-MRI has shown high sensitivity for breast cancer detection (89–100%) [1–12], while DWI has shown utility in predicting suitable therapies and monitoring response [13]. DCE-MRI consists in the serial acquisition of images before and afer the injection of intravenous contrast agent; it has been shown to give information about vascular permeability within the tumor [10, 11]. Diferent methods for DCE-MRI data analysis have been proposed, ranging from simple semiquantitative inspection of the time-intensity curves (TICs) to more sophisticated tracer kinetics modeling [14–18]. Te diferent methods were designed to capture the biologically relevant components from the dynamic MR signal and to relate them to the underlying pathophysio- logical processes taking place in the tissue. In principle, Hindawi Publishing Corporation BioMed Research International Volume 2015, Article ID 237863, 12 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2015/237863