MRI in Predicting Early Response to Chemotherapy in Patients With Locally Advanced Breast Cancer

OBJECTIVES:

• To determine the technical feasibility of using MRI in a multicenter setting using the most commonly available magnetic resonance (MR) systems (i.e., is the trial able to scan patients to a specific protocol, using different types of MRI machine) measured by the number of MRI scans not completed to technical specifications (i.e., incorrect sequences or incomplete scans) or trial protocol (i.e., scans not completed or completed at the wrong time).
• To determine how reliably the imaging data can be analyzed in a centralized, semi-automated manner (i.e., can MRI data be reliably transferred from different centers and analyzed using software based in the center for MR investigations at the University of Hull) measured by the number of cases where automated data analysis of completed MRI scans was not possible (i.e., data could not be analyzed at all or data required manual analysis).

OUTLINE: This is a multicenter study.

Patients undergo magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans at baseline, 4-7 days after beginning after the first course of chemotherapy, at the end of their second course of chemotherapy, and at the end of their fourth course of chemotherapy (first regimen). MRI techniques may include dynamic contrast-enhanced, diffusion-weighted, and spectroscopic.