Magnetic resonance imaging in the assessment of breast cancer after chemotherapy of localized masses with clips

Background Breast cancer remains a major cause of mortality among women aged over 40. Assessing how patients respond to chemotherapy is just as crucial as detecting the disease early. This assessment plays a key role in allowing less invasive surgical options and reducing the likelihood of the cancer returning. Among breast cancer follow-up methods, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has been investigated the most and is considered the top-recommended tool for evaluating patients’ response to chemotherapy. Aim Our study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of breast MRI in determining tumor response to adjuvant chemotherapy in correlation to postoperative pathological results. Patients and methods This prospective study was done by enrollment of 30 female patients referred to the MRI unit of the Radio-diagnosis department, Tanta University Hospital during the period from January 2024 to January 2025. Results MRI demonstrated significant importance in classifying response to chemotherapy. The addition of diffusion tensor imaging to routine MRI sequences has been effective and has showed more appreciated results in pathological complete response prediction but less appreciated in presence of residual disease. In case of residual disease, differentiation between non responders and partial responders either much or little response would be better evaluated by size changes and contrast kinetic patterns. Conclusions The effectiveness of MRI in assessing tumor response and predicting the presence of a complete tumor response and complete disappearance of malignant cells. This significantly assisted in selecting the appropriate surgery for patients and reduced the need for total mastectomy.