The risk of relapse associated with each breast cancer molecular subtype was determined in a large cohort of patients with breast cancer. In this study, the association of mammographic breast density and fibroglandular tissue volume measures with the subtype of breast cancer will be discussed.
Total 751 breast cancer patients have full field digital mammography (FFDM) which before surgery and chemotherapy were enrolled from 2011 to 2015. The patients include luminal-like (80.5%), basal-like (14.6%) and HER2-postive subtypes (4.9%). The receptor status was abstracted from clinical pathology records, and supplemented by IHC staining of tumor sections. In these patients, there are 9.76% patients were relapsing and 7.3% patients were metastasized. The breast density and volumetric measure was based on accumulated X-ray doses assessments by Volpara™ (Volpara version 1.4.2, Matakina Technology, NZ). The FFDM image from 58,550 health women enrolled from 2011 to 2015 were also used to generate the normal model and make the comparison baseline. All needed FFDM images were obtained from the Department of Medical Imaging, Changhua Christian Hospital, Taiwan.
The mean breast density of patients with basal-like and HER2-positive are higher than the healthy women density baseline from 3.3% to 5%. The mean fibroglandular tissue volume of patients was significant larger than health women. The mean fibroglandular tissue volume of HER2-positive (66.74 cm3, SD = 8.12) and basal-like patients (81.04 cm3, SD = 33.37) was significant larger than the volume of luminal-A (46.04 cm3, SD = 28.87) and luminal-B patients (41.71 cm3, SD = 18.55), and also larger than the mean fibroglandular tissue volume of health women from age 45 to 65 (38.36 cm3, SD = 20.47).
Because of the breast tissue composition, the variation of breast density and fibroglandular tissue volume can be the good predictor in cancer risk and for the subtype classification, especially from breast cancer patients with HER2-positive and basal-like subtype.
This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of Changhua Christian Hospital, Taiwan (No. 160110).
Department of Research, Changhua Christian Hospital
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All authors have declared no conflicts of interest.