[Preliminary study on the validity of whole body diffusion-weighted imaging for the detection of malignant lesions].
OBJECTIVE
To evaluate the validity of whole body diffusion-weighted imaging (WBDWI) for the detection of malignant lesions.


METHODS
Nine healthy volunteers, 4 postoperative cases of malignant tumor and 16 malignant tumor cases were included in this study. 29 cases underwent whole body diffusion-weighted imaging on GE Signa Excite HD MR scanner within one week after or before PET examination. The images were double-blindly evaluated by two radiologists without the knowledge of the original PET results. Clinical diagnoses of malignant lesions were mainly based on PET results taken as gold standard. The malignant lesions were evaluated according to nine locations: lymph node; central nervous system; lung; liver, gallbladder, pancreas and spleen; digestive tract; kidney and adrenal gland; pelvic; skeleton, and soft tissue of each subject. The sensitivity, specificity, positive predicative value, negative predicative value, Youden's index and likelihood ratio of WBDWI were analyzed.


RESULTS
The images of all the 9 healthy volunteers were normal. 57 malignant lesions were found in the 20 malignant cases by PET, among whom 48 lesions were detected by WBDWI including 2 false positive lesions. Among the 261 locations of 29 cases, the WBDWI examination showed 21 true positive locations, 2 false positive locations and 3 false negative locations. The sensitivity, specificity, positive predicative value, negative predicative value, Youden's index and likelihood ratio of WBDWI were 87.5%, 99.2%, 91.3%, 98.7%, 86.7%, and 103.7, respectively.


CONCLUSIONS
The validity of WBDWI is high, and it could be a new whole body imaging technique for staging of malignant tumors.
Department of Radiology, Second Affiliated Hospital of the Zhejiang University College of Medicine, Hangzhou 310009, China.
Jia-wei
JW
Wang
Song
S
Zhao
Yan
Y
Liu
Jing
J
Li
Lei-ming
LM
Xu
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D006528:Carcinoma, Hepatocellular / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000473:pathology; D038524:Diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D005260:Female; D019788:Fluorodeoxyglucose F18; D006801:Humans; D008113:Liver Neoplasms / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000473:pathology; D008175:Lung Neoplasms / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000473:pathology; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000473:pathology; D049268:Positron-Emission Tomography; D013274:Stomach Neoplasms / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000473:pathology; D051598:Whole Body Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D055815:Young Adult
D019788:Fluorodeoxyglucose F18