Reproducibility, Intra- And Inter-Observer Variability of ADC Measurement by Volumetric Segmentation of Bone Marrow in Whole Body Diffusion-Weighted Imaging (WB-DWI)

Sharon L. Giles¹, Catherine J. Simpkin¹, David John Collins¹, ², Christina Messiou¹, Nandita M. deSouza, ¹²

WB-DWI is emerging as a quantitative tool to assess treatment response in myeloma but changes in ADC indicative of response may be relatively small and analysis methods remain without consensus. This prospective study investigated the reproducibility, intra- and inter-observer variability of a volumetric segmentation technique in a cohort of healthy volunteers. Reproducibility of the ADC measurement was between 0.3% and 9.2% and the segmentation technique used provided a consistent and reliable method to generate ADC histograms. It did not introduce additional variation across or between observers and is therefore of potential value in clinical assessment of treatment response in myeloma.