Use of diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) in PET/MRI for head and neck cancer evaluation

The purpose of this study was to analyze whether diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) adds significant information to positron emission tomography/magnetic resonance imaging (PET/MRI) on lesion detection and characterization in head and neck cancers.

Seventy patients with different head and neck cancers were enrolled in this prospective study. All patients underwent sequential contrast-enhanced (ce) PET/computed tomography (CT) and cePET/MRI using a tri-modality PET/CT-MR setup either for staging or re-staging. First, the DWI alone was evaluated, followed by the PET/MRI with conventional sequences, and in a third step, the PET/MRI with DWI was evaluated. McNemar's test was used to evaluate differences in the accuracy of PET/MRI with and without DWI compared to the standard of reference.

One hundred eighty-eight (188) lesions were found, and of those, 118 (62.8%) were malignant and 70 (37.2%) were benign. PET/MRI without DWI had a higher accuracy in detecting malignant lesions than DWI alone (86.8% vs. 60.6%, p < 0.001). PET/MRI combined with DWI detected 120 concurrent lesions (89 malignant and 31 benign), PET/MRI alone identified 48 additional lesions (20 malignant and 28 benign), and DWI alone detected 20 different lesions (nine malignant and 11 benign). However, lesions detected on DWI did not change overall staging. SUV maximum and mean were significantly higher in malignant lesions than in benign lesions. DWI parameters between malignant and benign lesions were not statistically different.

The use of DWI as part of PET/MRI to evaluate head and neck cancers does not provide remarkable information. Thus, the use of DWI might not be needed in clinical PET/MRI protocols for the staging or restaging of head and neck cancers.