Multiparametric evaluation of bone tumors utilising diffusion weighted imaging and dynamic contrast enhanced magnetic resonance imaging

Aim: This study aimed to use multiparametric magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques, namely, diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) and dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DCE-MRI) to evaluate bone tumors.

Methods: Thirty-three patients with primary untreated bone tumors were assessed utilizing DWI and DCE-MRI. Various parameters like ADC values from DWI and percentage peak signal intensity (%PSI), the maximum slope of increase (MSI), and time to peak signal intensity (TTP) values were assessed in different cases, and the final correlation was drawn with histopathological findings.

Result: Parameters of semi-quantitative DCE-MRI, i.e., %PSI, MSI and, TTP, correlated significantly with the histopathological characteristics of the tumor (p values < 0.001). Minimum ADC value in the tumor also showed a strong correlation with the tumor characteristic (p values < 0.001). Also, the correlation between parameters of DWI and DCI-MRI is well correlated with each other.

Conclusion: The results of this study provide grounds for the integration of multiparametric pre-treatment evaluation of bone tumors. In our study, we not only tried to utilize different parameters of functional MRI in bone tumors as well as re-explored the semi-quantitative analysis of DCE-MRI.