Role of Advanced MRI Techniques in Diagnosis of Equivocal Hepatic Focal Lesions

Abstract

he clinical applications of diffusion-weighted imaging in the liver include detection and characterization of focal lesions as well as the emerging application in evaluation of post treatment tumor response. DW MR imaging is an attractive technique for multiple reasons, it can potentially add useful qualitative and quantitative information to conventional imaging sequences, it is quick (performed within a breath hold) and can be easily incorporated to existing protocols, and it is a non-enhanced technique (performed without the use of gadolinium-based contrast media), thus easy to repeat, and useful in patients with severe renal dysfunction at risk for nephrogenic systemic fibrosis. The ADC maps can also provide quantitative measurements of tissue water diffusivity, which can be used not only for disease assessment, but also for the evaluation of disease response to treatment. In our study we concluded that diffusion-weighted MRI sequence with quantitative ADC measurements shoul