Matthew David Blackledge1, Nina Tunariu1,2, Zaki Ahmed2, Julie Hughes2, Raquel Perez-Lopez1,2, Dow Mu Koh1,2, David J Collins1,2, and Martin O Leach1,2
1CRUK Cancer Imaging Center, Division of Radiotherapy and Imaging, Institute of Cancer Research, London, United Kingdom, 2MRI, Royal Marsden Hospital, London, United Kingdom
We evaluate the potential utility of storing all imaging acquisitions from whole-body diffusion-weighted MRI (WBDWI) studies. This provides the possibility of using weighted least-squares fitting to obtain maps of ADC uncertainty, invaluable to clinicians wishing to report confidence in ADC estimates. Furthermore, we describe for the first time a novel post-processing technique that combines ADC and ADC uncertainty information into a single computed image: noise-corrected exponential WBDWI. We demonstrate that this technique provides excellent contrast between bone metastases and background healthy tissue, but does not suffer from the same T2 shine-through and/or coil sensitivity artefact present in conventional DW-images.
