Preliminary study of intravoxel incoherent motion MR imaging in cervical cancer

Objective: To evaluate the intravoxel incoherent motion (IVIM) imaging parameters on 1.5 T MR system for diagnosing cervical carcinoma. Methods: 24 patients with pathologically confirmed cervical cancer and 30 healthy women underwent IVIM imaging with b values of 0-1000 s/mm². The parameters including f, D*, D, and ADC were determined and compared between the two groups using independent samples t test. The usefulness of these parameters for diagnosing cervical cancer was evaluated by areas under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. Results: The average f, D and ADC values were significantly different (P < 0.05) between that of normal fibrous stroma(40.87 ± 9.84%, 1.00 ± 0.28 × 10^-3 mm²/s, 1.56 ± 0.45 × 10^-3 mm²/s) and lateral muscle layer (36.00 ± 5.99%, 1.24 ± 0.20 × 10^-3 mm²/s, 1.83 ± 0.54 × 10^-3 mm²/s) whereas the D* values were not significantly different between that of normal fibrous stroma (17.64 ± 4.80 × 10^-3 mm²/s) and normal lateral muscle layer (17.69 ± 4.37 × 10^-3 mm²/s) in healthy women. The D* (16.83 ± 4.02 × 10^-3 mm²/s) and D (0.95 ± 0.15 × 10^-3 mm²/s), f(25.83 ± 6.12%) and ADC (1.05 ± 0.17 × 10^-3 mm²/s) values for differentiating cervical cancer from normal fibrous stroma were significantly different (P < 0.01) with areas under the ROC curves of 0.923 and 0.912, respectively. The f, D and ADC values for differentiating cervical cancer from normal lateral muscle layer were also significant (P < 0.01) with areas under the ROC curves of 0.881, 0.887, and 0.974, respectively. Conclusion: IVIM imaging is useful for differentiating cervical cancer from normal fibrous stroma and lateral muscle layer. (authors)