Evaluation of the Accuracy of Diffusion-weighted Imaging (DWI) in Differentiating Primary Brain Lymphoma (PBL) of Glial Tumors

Abstract

Introduction: Diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) and the apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) map have an important role in the diagnosis and differentiation of brain tumors. Since the use of ADC for differing glioma of primary brain lymphoma (PBL) tumors is controversial and requires further investigation, the aim of this study was to use diffusion-weighted MRI for determining the ADC values of glial tumors and the relationship between glioma and PBL tumors. Methods: This cross-sectional retrospective study is carried out by reviewing documents, images, and ADC brain MRIs of 60 patients (26 males, 34 females) admitted to Shohada Hospital from 2006 to 2016 in Tehran after brain biopsy. The ADC values were measured in the tumor area from diffusion images of the brain with b-values of 0 and 1000 s/mm2. For data analysis, ANOVA and the Tukey post hoc test were used. Results: The ADC values of astrocytoma grade 2 were significantly greater than other grades of glioma and PBL tumor (P ). However, there were no statistically significant differences among the ADC values between anaplastic grade 2 and glioblastoma grade 4. In addition, the ADC values of the PBL were significantly lower than those of astrocytoma grade 2 (P Conclusions: The results of this study showed that the ADC values in the astrocytoma grade 2 were higher than the PBL. Thus, knowledge of the ADC values can be helpful in better diagnostics of astrocytoma and PBL cases and for future studies.