Virtual biopsies for breast cancer using MCR-ALS perfusion-based biomarkers and double cross-validation PLS-DA

Functional MRI is, currently, the most sensitive technique in breast cancer for detecting early tumors, and perfusion (DCE-MRI) has become the most important sequence to depict and characterize angiogenesis and neovascularization. In this work, we propose the use of new biomarkers that are related to clear physiological phenomena, obtained from MCR-ALS as an alternative to curve-based pseudo-biomarkers and pharmacokinetics models. In order to provide a discrimination and prediction model between healthy tissue and cancer, we propose using PLS-DA with double cross-validation (2CV) and variable selection, repeated several times and obtaining excellent average results for the performance indexes (f-score: 0.9149, MCC: 0.8538, AUROC: 0.8794). After selecting the optimal prediction model, a unique probabilistic map called “virtual biopsy” that shows in different colors the probability that each pixel of the image has a tumor behavior is obtained, helping the specialist with the identification and characterization of breast tumors with only one easy-to-interpret biomarker map.