Keywords:
Cardiovascular system, Cardiac, Oncology, MR-Functional imaging, Technical aspects, Cancer
Authors:
J. Broncano1, F. Caro Mateo1, P. Caro Mateo2, J. Sánchez-González3, A. Luna4; 1Córdoba/ES, 2Cádiz/ES, 3Madrid/ES, 4Jaén/ES
DOI:
10.1594/ecr2018/C-2214
Aims and objectives
Diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) is a potential clinical application for non-contrast tissue characterization and lesion differentiation.
It is based on the evaluation of Brownian motion of water molecules and has been related to tissue ultrastructure (irregular interstitium,
increased cellularity,
etc.) [1-3].
In other regions of our anatomy helps to differentiate normal versus abnormal tissues and benign form malignant lesions [4].
Also has a great value in treatment monitoring,
being the apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) a well-known prognostic factor [5].
DWI acquisition in the heart is challenging,
requiring at least cardiac gating.
At very high b values (b>1000 s/mm2) there is no signal of the myocardium.
Low and high b value DWI has been tested in the heart for evaluation of inflammatory (myocarditis) and ischemic myocardiopathies [6-11].
Laissy et al.
described that the most optimal b value for evaluating the myocardium was 300 s/mm2 [11].
Cardiac tumors constitute a rare entity in the heart (prevalence 0.001 – 0.3%) being benign lesions more frequent (75%) than malignant ones.
Accurate differentiation of them has great important in patient management and prognosis.
To the best of our knowledge there is no reference in the literature of DWI for evaluating cardiac tumors [12].
Therefore,
the purpose of our study is to evaluate the feasibility,
reproducibility and diagnostic performance of quantitative analysis of DWI in cardiac tumors.