Quantitative Diffusion-Weighted MR Imaging of Lung Neoplasm: A Promising Method for Delineating Active Tumor

John Chetley Ford¹, Kathryn M. Olsen², Daryl Turlington², Kai Ding¹, Elisabeth Weiss¹, Geoffrey D. Hugo¹

A respiratory-gated echo-planar diffusion-weighted pulse sequence was investigated by conducting 25 diffusion studies in seven lung cancer patients who had also undergone PET/CT. Quantitative MR diffusion imaging provides delineation of viable lung tumor and exhibits excellent correspondence with PET imaging. Intra-patient repeatability of average apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) in lung tumor is 4-8%. The remarkable precision of quantitative ADC using this pulse sequence will afford the ability to detect ADC changes in response to treatment and provide meaningful correlation with biological tissue state.