Diffusion-Weighted Echo Planar Imaging of Ovarian Tumors: Is It Useful to Measure Apparent Diffusion Coefficients?

Abstract

With conventional MRI, a tendency of ADCs could be predicted. ADCs may not provide additional information, especially to discriminate benign from malignant lesions.

Diffusion‐weighted images differentiate benign from malignant thyroid nodules

“…For this reason the cystic or necrotic parts of the tumors were not measured in our study. The use of DW-MRI in discriminating between benign and malignant ovarian tumors has been disappointing due to prominent cystic components in this pathology (31).…”

Differentiation of Benign from Malignant Adnexal Masses by Functional 3 Tesla MRI Techniques: Diffusion-Weighted Imaging and Time-Intensity Curves of Dynamic Contrast-Enhanced MRI

“…However, there is considerable overlap between benign and malignant masses in the mentioned parameters (Timmerman et al, 2000;Katayama et al, 2002;Thomassin-Naggara et al, 2009). Researchers in different studies have investigated more recent functional MR techniques such as DCE-MRI, DWI, and its quantitative derivative, ADC in distinguishing benign from malignant adnexal masses (Katayama et al, 2002;Takeuchi et al, 2010;ThomassinNaggara et al, 2011;Li et al, 2012;Zhang et al, 2012). The present study showed that DWI, mean ADC value, and TIC type contribute to differentiating benign from malignant adnexal masses, with TIC type being more accurate than DWI and mean ADC value.…”

“…that ADC values are not useful for differentiating benign from malignant adnexal masses (Katayama et al, 2002;Fujii et al, 2008). Thomassin-Naggara et al (2009) demonstrated that DWI signal intensity is an accurate tool for predicting benignity of complex adnexal masses, but ADC measurements did not contribute to differentiating benign from malignant adnexal masses.…”

“…Some studies showed that ADC value is useful in discriminating benign from malignant masses (Takeuchi et al, 2010;Li et al, 2012;Zhang et al, 2012). But on the contrary, the results of the studies by Thomassin-Naggara et al (2009), Katayama et al (2002), and Fujii et al (2008) demonstrated that ADC measurements did not contribute to differentiating benign from malignant adnexal masses.…”

“…Thus prior studies have been carried out to investigate the role of more recent functional MR techniques such as dynamic contrast-enhanced MR imaging (DCE-MRI), diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) and its quantitative derivative, apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) in distinguishing benign from malignant adnexal masses, and to determine the value of adding these sequences to a conventional MR protocol (Katayama et al, 2002;Thomassin-Naggara et al, 2008a;Takeuchi et al, 2010;Li et al, 2012). DWI provides a tissue contrast, based on the differences of water mobility in different tissues.…”