Published in:
01-09-2016 | Original Article
Diffusion weighted imaging in differentiating malignant and benign neuroblastic tumors
Published in: Japanese Journal of Radiology | Issue 9/2016
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Purpose
Our aim was to assess diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) of neuroblastic tumors and whether apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) value may have a role in discrimination among neuroblastoma, ganglioneuroblastoma and ganglioneuroma.
Material and methods
The DWIs (b = 0–800 s/mm2) of 24 children (13 girls, 11 boys) who were diagnosed neuroblastic tumors on histopathological examination (neuroblastoma = 15, ganglioneuroblastoma = 5, ganglioneuroma = 4) were evaluated retrospectively. The ADC maps were performed by drawing freehand ROI on PACS (Sectra Workstation IDS7, Linköping, Sweden).
Results
We observed a significant decrease in ADC value of neuroblastomas 0.869 ± 0.179 × 10−3 mm2/s compared to ganglioneuroblastomas 0.97 ± 0.203 × 10−3 mm2/s and ganglioneuromas 1.147 ± 0.299 × 10−3 mm2/s (p = 0.026). There was no significant difference in between ganglioneuroblastoma and ganglioneuroma (p = 0.16). In detecting neuroblastomas; the sensitivity, specificity, negative and positive predictive values of ADC were 74, 67, 78.6, 66 % respectively with a cut-off value of 0.93 × 10−3 mm2/s.
Conclusion
Our study stands out as the most comprehensive study with larger sample size on this topic. Moreover, we are able to suggest a cut-off value which can discriminate neuroblastoma from ganglioneuroblastoma and ganglioneuroma. We believe that ADC will evolve to an objective, quantitative measurement in discrimination among malignant and benign neuroblastic tumors.