Abstract:

INTRODUCTION: We aimed in this study to evaluate the usefulness of DWI in tissue characterization of head and neck lesions, to investigate the difference in ADC values for distinguishing malignant and benign head and neck lesions (groupA), lymphoma and carcinoma (groupB), malignant and benign lymph nodes (groupC) and to determine threshold values for these distinctions. METHODS: We included 95 lesions in 88 patients. 84 lesions were histopathologically confirmed. DWI using single-shot echo-planar imaging with b factors of 0, 400 and 800 sec/mm2 were performed on 1.5TMR unit. Groups were compared using Kruskal-Wallis test. RESULTS: Statistically significant difference was found in groupA, groupB and groupC. When an ADC value of 1.13×10-3 mm2/s was used for predicting malignancy in groupA, the sensitivity, specificity and accuracy were 85.7%, 71.7%, 78.9%, respectively. If 0.85×10-3 mm2/s was used as a threshold value for differentiating in groupB the best results were obtained with an accuracy of 83.7%, sensitivity of 92.9% and specificity of 78.3%. When 0.95×10-3 mm2/s was used as a threshold value for differentiating in group C the highest accuracy of 82.8%, with 90.5% sensitivity and 71.4% specificity was obtained. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: DWI can be used to characterize head and neck lesions based on ADC values, but cannot replace biopsy.

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