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Oncologic applications of diffusion‐weighted MRI in the body
Author(s) -
Bonekamp Susanne,
CoronaVillalobos Celia P.,
Kamel Ihab R.
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
journal of magnetic resonance imaging
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.563
H-Index - 160
eISSN - 1522-2586
pISSN - 1053-1807
DOI - 10.1002/jmri.22786
Subject(s) - diffusion mri , medicine , effective diffusion coefficient , radiology , magnetic resonance imaging , pelvis , nuclear medicine , lesion , pathology
Diffusion‐weighted MRI (DWI) allows the detection of malignancies in the abdomen and pelvis. Lesion detection and characterization using DWI largely depends on the increased cellularity of solid or cystic lesions compared with the surrounding tissue. This increased cellularity leads results in restricted diffusion as indicated by reduction in the apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC). Low pretreatment ADC values of several malignancies have been shown to be predictive of better outcome. DWI can assess response to systemic or regional treatment of cancer at a cellular level and will therefore detect successful treatment earlier than anatomical measures. In this review, we provide a brief technical overview of DWI, discuss quantitative image analysis approaches, and review studies which have used DWI for the purpose of detection and characterization of malignancies as well as the early prediction of treatment response. J. Magn. Reson. Imaging 2012;257–279. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.