Developing a biomechanical model-based elasticity imaging method for assessing hormone receptor positive breast cancer treatment-related myocardial stiffness changes.
Caroline E MillerJennifer H JordanAlexandra ThomasJared A WeisPublished in: Journal of medical imaging (Bellingham, Wash.) (2021)
Purpose: Assessing cardiotoxicity as a result of breast cancer therapeutics is increasingly important as breast cancer diagnoses are trending younger and overall survival is increasing. With evidence showing that prevention of cardiotoxicity plays a significant role in increasing overall survival, there is an unmet need for accurate non-invasive methods to assess cardiac injury due to cancer therapies. Current clinical methods are too coarse and emerging research methods have not yet achieved clinical implementation. Approach: As a proof of concept, we examine myocardial elasticity imaging in the setting of premenopausal women diagnosed with hormone receptor positive (HR-positive) breast cancer undergoing severe estrogen depletion, as cardiovascular injury from early estrogen depletion is well-established. We evaluate the ability of our model-based cardiac elasticity imaging analysis method to indicate subclinical cancer therapy-related cardiac decline by examining differences in the change in cardiac elasticity over time in two cohorts of premenopausal women either undergoing severe estrogen depletion for HR-positive breast cancer or triple negative breast cancer patients as comparators. Results: Our method was capable of producing functional mechanical elasticity maps of the left ventricle (LV). Using these elasticity maps, we show significant differences in cardiac mechanical elasticity in the HR-positive breast cancer cohort compared to the comparator cohort. Conclusions: We present our methodology to assess the mechanical stiffness of the LV by interrogating cardiac magnetic resonance images within a computational biomechanical model. Our preliminary study suggests the potential of this method for examining cardiac tissue mechanical stiffness properties as an early indicator of cardiac decline.
Keyphrases
- positive breast cancer
- left ventricular
- magnetic resonance
- high resolution
- heart failure
- polycystic ovary syndrome
- healthcare
- primary care
- postmenopausal women
- risk assessment
- magnetic resonance imaging
- squamous cell carcinoma
- metabolic syndrome
- pulmonary hypertension
- atrial fibrillation
- optical coherence tomography
- early onset
- drug delivery
- deep learning
- adipose tissue
- pulmonary artery
- photodynamic therapy
- mass spectrometry
- free survival
- drug induced
- papillary thyroid