Role Of Diffusion Weighted Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Differentiation of benign from malignant liver lesions.

Objective. Differentiation of benign from malignant liver lesions. Methods: The main sources of data for the study are patients from the following teaching Hospitals attached to Bapuji Education Association, J.J.M. Medical College, Davangere. 30 patients with focal liver lesions and additional 10 healthy volunteers with no focal liver lesion were studied to know to know normal ADC of liver Result: Out of the total 85 focal liver lesions seen in 30 patients there were 63(74.1%) were malignant and 22(25.9%) were benign lesions. The number of malignant FLLs detected with DWI (62 out of 63 - 98.4%) was highly significant than that detected with T2 WI (P <0.001). However there was significant difference between the T2 weighted imaging and DWI for the detection of HCCs alone. This may be due most of HCCs were more than 2cm in size. However, there was no difference determined between T2 weighted imaging and DWI for the detection of benign hepatic lesions in our study. Mean ADC values obtained from normal liver parenchyma in benign and malignant group 1.25±0.04 x 10-3 mm² /s. and 1.23±0.06 x 10-3 mm² /s. respectively. Mean ADC of normal liver parenchyma (both benign and malignant group) was 1.24± 0.06 x 10-3 mm2 /s were not significant (ANOVA p=0.20). Conclusion: Cysts and hemangiomas had the highest ADC values while malignant masses had the lowest. The lowest ADC values among the malignant masses belonged to metastases. Mean ADC values of malignant lesions were significantly lower than those of benign lesions: 0.92 x 10-3 mm² /s V/s 2.68 x 10-3 mm² /s respectively (P< .001). The Sensitivity of 98 %( 61/62), Specificity of 100% with the ADC cutoff value 1.26 x 10-3 mm² /s was obtained by normal distribution (mean ± 2SD) for differentiating between benign and malignant liver lesions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]