Concomitant chemo-radiotherapy (CRT) with cisplatin is a method of choice for treatment of loco-regionally advanced head and neck squamous-cell carcinoma (HNSCC) [1]. Radiologic imaging could predict treatment efficacy before the start of CRT, therefore allowing use of individualized protocol adjustment in case of non-responsive tumours. Recently, magnetic resonance (MR) diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) with intra-voxel incoherent motion (IVIM) has shown promise for assessing tumour response. IVIM has been reported to allow for separate analysis of pure diffusion and perfusion in tissues using the bi-exponential curve...

19 patients (18 male, 1 female; median age, 58 years; range, 46 – 67 years) with loco-regionally advanced HNSCC treated with concomitant CRT were included in this study. Pretreatment MR images (1 to 7 days before CRT start) and MR images obtained 2.5 to 3 months after the end of treatment were analysed retrospectively. MR imaging was performed on 3T with a neck array coil. Morphologic images including T2-weighted sequences with short tau inversion recovery (STIR) (TR/TE 5010/71 ms, TI 170 ms, slice thickness of...

In all patients, radiological tumour response to CRT was determined 2.5-3 months post-therapy – 3 out of 19 (16%) patients had disease recurrence (PR) and 16 (84%) patients had CR to treatment. Average parameter values and the illustrative example of a responder and non-responder with multiparametric MRI maps are shown in Table 1 and Figure 1 and 2, respectively. Complete response Partial response Arithmetic mean Standard deviation Arithmetic mean Standard deviation D(×10-3mm2/s) 0.57 0.13 0.84 0.13 D*(×10-3mm2/s) 18.16 3.48 14.13 6.14 f 0.15 0.08 0.14...

In our study, lower D and ADC values were associated with better response of loco-regionally advanced HNSCC to CRT. Both parameters reflect tumour cellularity and studies have already shown that higher pretreatment ADC values correlate with a worse prognosis, indicating lower cell density and higher stroma proportion [9]. Positive correlation between ADC and D has already been shown in previous studies since both parameters reflect diffusion of molecules in the tissue [10, 11]. A negative correlation between vascularity of renal cell tumours and tumour cell...

A. Leben; Ljubljana/SI - nothing to disclose K. Surlan Popovic; Ljubljana/SI - nothing to disclose M. Garbajs; Ljubljana/SI - nothing to disclose D. Pirnat; Velenje/SI - nothing to disclose A. Novakovic; Ljubljana/SI - nothing to disclose

Winquist E, Agbassi C, Meyers BM, Yoo J, Chan KKW. Systemic therapy in the curative treatment of head and neck squamous cell cancer: a systematic review. J Otolaryngol - Head Neck Surg. 2017;46(1):29. doi:10.1186/s40463-017-0199-x Le Bihan D, Breton E, Lallemand D, Aubin ML, Vignaud J, Laval-Jeantet M. Separation of diffusion and perfusion in intravoxel incoherent motion MR imaging. Radiology. 1988;168(2):497–505 Jansen JF, Parra C, Lu Y, Shukla-Dave A. Evaluation of head and neck tumors with functional MRI. Magn Reson Imaging Clin N Am. 2016;24(1):123–33 Ding...