Keywords:
Musculoskeletal soft tissue, Oncology, MR, MR-Diffusion/Perfusion, Diagnostic procedure, Neoplasia
Authors:
A. F. I. Moustafa, R. A. Zeitoun, A. Shokry, M. M. A. Rezk; Cairo/EG
DOI:
10.26044/ecr2019/C-1792
Aims and objectives
Soft tissue sarcomas/tumors (STSs) are a diversified class of neoplasia that have diagnostic and therapeutic problems for clinical care (1).
DWI has been presumed to have the ability to discriminate between benign and malignant soft-tissue tumors because malignant tumors have more cellularity and therefore have more restricted diffusion than benign tumors (2).
The diagnosis of such masses remains a challenge for the clinician because malignant and benign tumors,
as well as non-neoplastic masses following inflammation or trauma,
have a similar presentation (3).
MRI is the modality of choice to evaluate soft tissue masses.
In spite the presence of some MRI findings indicative for malignancy,
such as infiltration of adjacent tissues,
osseous destruction,
and the size of the mass,
there are no clear standards to discriminate benign masses from malignancies.
Thus,
the histopathologic workup is required for reliable characterization of soft tissue masses.
DWI may reveal the microstructure of such masses and may,
therefore,
be helpful to distinguish (3).
DWI allows quantitative and qualitative analyses of tissue cellularity and cell membrane integrity and has been widely used for tumor detection and characterization and to monitor treatment response (4).
The aim of work is to evaluate the ability of Diffusion-Weighted MRI in the characterization of the extremity soft tissue tumors and determining whether benign or malignant and trying to define a threshold or cut off ADC values of benign & malignant tumors as well as using DWI in the post-therapeutic follow up of extremity soft tissue masses.