Modulating Diffusion-Weighted Magnetic Resonance Imaging for Screening in Oncologic Tertiary Prevention: A Prospective Ex Vivo and In Vivo Study

This study aims at prospectively evaluating an adapted DWI sequence ex vivo and in vivo in oncologic patients undergoing abdominal MRI. Methods This institutional review board–approved, prospective study included phantom measurements, volunteer examinations, and oncologic patient examinations of the abdomen. Fifty-seven MRI examinations in 54 patients (mean age, 58 years; range, 21–90 years) were included into the analysis. The MRI examination were performed at a 1.5 T MRI scanner (MAGNETOM Aera; Siemens Healthcare, Erlangen, Germany) and included both a standard EPI-DWI (s-DWI; b = 50, 900 s/mm2) and an adapted DWI (opt-DWI; EPI-DWI with b = 0, 50, 900, 1500 s/mm2, acquisition with higher spatial resolution and optimized processing for the abdomen including motion correction, adaptive image combination, and background suppression). For b = 900 s/mm2, the ratio of signal intensity in the normal tissue and the standard deviation of the noise in the surrounding air was quantitatively calculated; image quality and tissue differentiation parameters were rated by 2 independent, blinded readers using a 5-point Likert scale. Statistics included Wilcoxon signed-rank test and kappa statistic (P
Source: Investigative Radiology - Category: Radiology Tags: Original Articles Source Type: research