Diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging for early response assessment of chemoradiotherapy in patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma

Diffusion-Weighted Imaging of Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma: Can Pretreatment DWI Predict Local Failure Based on Long-Term Outcome?

“…Currently, there are only a few NPC DWI studies that have correlated diffusion parameters with tumor characteristics at diagnosis, such as T-stage, 23,24 early intratreatment response, 25 and posttreatment response. [12][13][14][15]26 Regarding using pretreatment tumor ADC to predict posttreatment response, 12-15 3 of these studies were based on short-term outcome at the end or 3 months after the end of treatment. [12][13][14] These 3 studies showed mixed results with both low [12][13] and high 14 pretreatment ADCs reported in tumors with poor outcomes, with the results being significant in only 1 of the studies.…”

“…[12][13][14][15]26 Regarding using pretreatment tumor ADC to predict posttreatment response, 12-15 3 of these studies were based on short-term outcome at the end or 3 months after the end of treatment. [12][13][14] These 3 studies showed mixed results with both low [12][13] and high 14 pretreatment ADCs reported in tumors with poor outcomes, with the results being significant in only 1 of the studies. 12 However, a recent NPC study by Zhang et al 15 with long-term follow-up and a large sample size of 541 patients showed a significant association between a high mean ADC in primary tumors pretreatment and poor survival at 3 years.…”

“…Most relapses in squamous cell carcinoma occur in the first 2 years, whereas for NPC, only around 52% of NPCs relapse in the first 2 years, with a further 39% at 2-5 years and 9% after 5 years. 11 Currently, most predictive treatment-response NPC studies are based on a relatively short-term outcome ranging up to 3 months posttreatment, [12][13][14] and only 1 study has reported results based on longer term outcome correlating pretreatment DWI with local relapse-free or disease-free survival at 3 years. 15 Therefore, the aim of this study was to determine the diagnostic performance of pretreatment DWI of the primary tumor site for the prediction of local failure (LF) based on long-term follow-up at a minimum of 5 years for patients diagnosed with local control (LC) in NPC.…”

Examination of the predictive factors of the response to whole brain radiotherapy for brain metastases from lung cancer using MRI

“…DWI produces a signal intensity that reflects the cell density of a tumor and correlates with its histopathological image; therefore, it is believed to be useful in predicting the treatment effectiveness for esophageal, pharyngeal and cervical cancer (34)(35)(36)(37). DWI is also considered to be useful in predicting the efficacy of g-knife therapy for BMs (38).…”

“…A total of 94 patients with BMs from primary lung cancer were treated with WBRT using a palliative radiation dose (30)(31)(32)(33)(34)(35)(36)(37)(38)(39)(40) at Teikyo University School of Medicine between September 2010 and April 2013. The study was limited to patients who had undergone contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) within 1 month prior to WBRT, and brain imaging (contrast-enhanced computed tomography/MRI) using the same imaging modality prior and subsequent to WBRT.…”