Role of Diffusion Weighted MRI in Differentiation between Benign and Malignant Hepatic Focal Lesions

Abstract

MRI having many sequences, markedly helps in the detection of small lesions and in reaching the diagnosis easily even without contrast injection or the need for biopsy as in cysts and hemangioma. Diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) has been reported to be useful for the early detection of small focal hepatic lesions. Moreover, DWI offers the possibility to obtain criteria for lesion characterization without the need for contrast agent administration. In our study we concluded that adding DWI to routine abdominal MRI and ADC measurements is a useful tool in differential diagnosis of malignant from benign liver lesions. The ADC values of benign lesions are significantly higher than those of malignant lesions, with variable degrees of overlap between the pathological entities. DWI proved to be helpful in the characterization of focal liver lesions, but should always be used in conjunction with traditional MRI since there is great overlap between ADC values of benign and malignant lesions. It seems reasonable to