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Diagnostic accuracy of diffusion tensor imaging in differentiating malignant from benign compressed vertebrae

  • Spinal Neuroradiology
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Abstract

Purpose

To study diagnostic accuracy of diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) in differentiating malignant from benign compressed vertebrae.

Methods

This study was done on 43 patients with compressed vertebrae on conventional magnetic resonance study that underwent DTI. The mean diffusivity (MD) and fractional anisotropy (FA) of malignant (n = 24) and benign (n = 19) compressed vertebrae were calculated by two readers.

Results

There was a significantly lower (P = 0.001) MD of both readers between malignant (0.74 ± 0.2 and 0.78 ± 0.2 × 10−3 mm2/s) and benign (1.67 + 0.3 and 1.63 ± 0.3 × 10−3 mm2/s) compressed vertebrae. The FA of malignant compressed vertebrae of both readers (0.55 ± 0.2 and 0.52 ± 0.1) was significantly higher (P = 0.001) than that of benign (0.26 ± 0.1 and 0.28 ± 0.1) compressed vertebrae. There was excellent inter-reader agreement between both readers using MD (K = 0.91) and FA (K = 0.86). The thresholds of MD and FA used for differentiating malignant from benign compressed vertebrae of both readers were 1.15 and 1.16 × 10−3 mm2/s and 0.37 and 0.34 with area under the curve (AUC) of 0.98, 0.96, 0.93, and 0.92 and diagnostic accuracy of 95.3%, 88.4%, 90.1%, and 86.0% respectively. Combined MD and FA revealed AUC of 0.99 and 0.97 and diagnostic accuracy of 95.3% and 93.0% by both readers respectively.

Conclusion

DTI is a non-invasive technique providing accurate imaging parameters that can be used for differentiating malignant from benign compressed vertebrae.

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Abbreviations

ADC:

Apparent diffusion coefficient

DTI:

Diffusion tensor imaging

DWI:

Diffusion-weighted imaging

MD:

Mean diffusivity

FA:

Fractional anisotropy

ROI:

Region of interest

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Funding

No funding was received for this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Diagnostic Radiology, Mansoura Faculty of Medicine, Mansoura, 13551, Egypt

    Ahmed Abdel Khalek Abdel Razek & Fatma Mohamed Sherif

Authors
  1. Ahmed Abdel Khalek Abdel Razek
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  2. Fatma Mohamed Sherif
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Contributions

A Abdel Razek: idea, MR analysis, writing manuscript and statistical analysis

F Elsherif: data collection, image analysis, and statistical analysis

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ahmed Abdel Khalek Abdel Razek.

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Conflict of interest

All authors declare they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in the studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed consent

Waived because this is a retrospective study.

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Razek, A.A.K.A., Sherif, F.M. Diagnostic accuracy of diffusion tensor imaging in differentiating malignant from benign compressed vertebrae. Neuroradiology 61, 1291–1296 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00234-019-02286-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00234-019-02286-x

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