3.0t superconducting magnetic resonance scanner

For MRI scanning, the Siemens 3.0T superconducting magnetic resonance scanner was adopted. The patient was placed in a prone position with both breasts naturally drooped. The breast and axillary regions were scanned. After conventional triplane localization, transaxial T1WI, T2WI, T2WI-FS, and dynamic contrast-enhanced scans were performed. Field of view was 340 mm, slice thickness was 4 mm, and spacing was 0.8 mm; matrix: 320 × 320. Gadopentetate meglumine (GD-DTPA), a contrast agent, was rapidly injected through the cubital vein at 0.2 mmol/kg at an injection rate of 3.0 mL/s, and 15 mL of normal saline was intravenously injected at the same rate to flush out the residual contrast agent. A phase was scanned before injection of the contrast agent, after which the body position was maintained, and other phases were scanned in the 20 s after injection of the contrast agent, with five consecutive phases acquired without interval [20 (link), 21 (link)].

3.0 T Superconducting Magnetic Resonance Scanner (Siemens, TIM Trio, Erlangen, Germany) was employed to conduct MRI scanning: with a 12-channel standard head coil enhancing the signal-to-noise ratio, whole brain scan (from the calvarium to the foramen magnum region) with the 3D-MP-RAGE sequence was performed on all subjects to obtain whole-brain 3D-T1WI structure images. The scan parameters were as follows: repetition time (TR) = 2530 ms, echo time (TE) = 2.22 ms, flip angle (FA) = 7°, MATRIX = 224 × 224, field of view (FOV) = 224 mm × 224 mm, VS = 1 mm × 1 mm × 1 mm, and scanning time = 5 min and 28 sec; slice thickness = 0.9 mm, slice distance = 0 mm, and slice numbers = 176.

A Siemens 3.0 T superconducting magnetic resonance scanner was adopted. Each patient fasted for 6–8 h before the examination. The conventional MRI sequence was the TSE sequence with the conduction of plain scanning and enhanced scanning (in a few cases, no enhanced scan was conducted). A single-excitation. T2-weighted sequence with breath-holding, respiratory gating, and fat suppression techniques was adopted in the MRCP with a rotation at 15° intervals in the lateral position. A total of 10–12 blocks were scanned and imaged on a workstation for 3D MIP reconstruction. The images of the MRI plain scan and MRI enhanced scan sequences were observed together with the MRCP raw images and MIP 3D reconstructed images.