Diagnostic accuracy of whole-body diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging with 3.0 T in detection of primary and metastatic neoplasms.

INTRODUCTION: To discuss the accuracy of the whole-body diffusion-weighted imaging with background body signal suppression (WB-DWIBS) technique performed in the 3.0-T system.

METHODS: We studied 17 patients who underwent positron emission tomography (PET)/CT and WB-DWIBS examinations for staging their diseases. The DWIBS pulse and echo-planar imaging-short T1 inversion recovery single-shot pulse sequences were performed for WB-DWIBS. A PET/CT scan was performed with 18-fluorodeoxyglucose. The lesions were localised and counted in both of the examinations, and WB-DWIBS was evaluated for the neoplastic tissue detection rate, while PET/CT was accepted as the reference standard modality.

RESULTS: The WB-DWIBS scan had a room occupation time of 32-35 min. All of the metastasis positive patients (n = 12) detected with PET/CT were also detected with WB-DWIBS (100%). In our patient group, there were a total of 109 bone metastases on PET/CT scans, and 93 of them (85.3%) were demonstrated with WB-DWIBS. We detected 128 metastatic lymph nodes on PET/CT, and 123 of them (96.3%) were demonstrated with WB-DWIBS. There were a total of 17 liver metastases on PET/CT, and 15 of them (88.2%) were detected with WB-DWIBS. There was no statistically significant difference between the two imaging modalities in detecting bone, lymph node and liver metastases (P > 0.05).

CONCLUSIONS: WB-DWIBS is a non-invasive technique that may successfully detect the spreading of the tumoural tissue in cancer patients when compared with PET/CT.