Diffusion weighted magnetic resonance imaging is a feasible method for characterizing regional lymph nodes in canine patients with head and neck disease

The objective of this prospective, exploratory study was to evaluate diffusion ‐weighted MRI and ADC as potential methods for detecting metastatic lymph nodes in dogs with naturally occurring disease. We hypothesized that diffusion‐weighted MRI would identify significantly different ADC values between benign and metastatic lymph nodes in a group of canine patients with hea d or neck disease. Our study population consisted of eight client‐owned canine patients, with a total of 20 lymph nodes evaluated (six metastatic, 14 benign). Our results demonstrated that two of four observers identified a significant difference between the mean ADC values of the benign and metas tatic lymph nodes. When data from all four observers were pooled, the difference between the mean apparent diffusion coefficients values of the benign and metastatic lymph nodes did not reach significance (P‐value = 0.0566). Findings indicated that diffusion‐weighted MRI is a feasible method for further characterizing enlarged lymph nodes in dogs with head and neck disease, however measured ADC values did not differ for benign vs. metastatic lymph nodes in this small sample of dogs.
Source: Veterinary Radiology and Ultrasound - Category: Veterinary Research Authors: Tags: ORIGINAL INVESTIGATION Source Type: research