Correlation between the area of high-signal intensity on SPIO-enhanced MR imaging and the pathologic size of sentinel node metastases in breast cancer patients with positive sentinel nodes

Background We previously demonstrated that superparamagnetic iron oxide (SPIO)-enhanced MR imaging is promising for the detection of metastases in sentinel nodes localized by CT-lymphography in patients with breast cancer. The purpose of this study was to determine the predictive criteria of the size of nodal metastases with SPIO-enhanced MR imaging in breast cancer, with histopathologic findings as reference standard.