Fig. 3
From: Breast MRI during pregnancy and lactation: clinical challenges and technical advances
Adopted from Nissan et al. Proc. Intl. Soc. Mag. Reson. Med. 22 (2014)
Characterization of the lactating breast using DTI. DTI-derived direction and vector maps of a 30-year-old healthy lactating volunteer are presented. Axial images overlaid on anatomical non-fat surpassed T2-weighted images at the height of the nipple are present. The direction map represents the direction of the 1st principal eigenvector in a three color code: red: right <<>> left; green: head <<>> feet; blue: anterior <<>> posterior. The vector map presents in red sticks the direction of the 1st principal eigenvector ν1. Note: The lactating breast exhibits dominant directional diffusion along the anterior–posterior axis, reflecting the structure of milk ducts heading from the base of the breast towards the nipple, while the vector map portray linear successive “duct-like” structures towards the nipple.