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A comparative study of diffusion kurtosis imaging and T2* mapping in quantitative detection of lumbar intervertebral disk degeneration

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Abstract

Purpose

To assess the feasibility of diffusion kurtosis imaging (DKI) for diagnosing lumbar intervertebral disk degeneration (IDD) and to compare the potential of DKI and T2* mapping in the diagnosis of early IDD.

Methods

Sagittal T2WI, DKI, and T2* mapping were performed in 75 subjects with 375 lumbar intervertebral disks at a 3.0-T MRI. DKI-related parameters including mean kurtosis (MK), mean diffusivity (MD), fractional anisotropy (FA), and T2* values were calculated for each disk which was segmented into three regions: nucleus pulposus (NP), anterior annulus fibrosus (AAF), and posterior annulus fibrosus (PAF).

Results

MK and FA were positively correlated with Pfirrmann grade (all P < 0.001). MD and T2* were negatively correlated with Pfirrmann grade (all P < 0.001) except for T2* value of AAF (r = 0.087, P > 0.05). MK and FA values increased, while MD and T2* values decreased with age. No statistical significance was found between men and women (P > 0.05). Cephalic lumbar disks (L1/L2 and L2/L3) got lower MK and FA values than caudal lumbar disks (L4/L5 and L5/S1) (all P < 0.05), while cephalic lumbar disks got higher MD value than caudal lumbar disks (all P < 0.05). ROC analysis demonstrated that MK, MD, and FA showed significantly higher diagnostic accuracies than T2*, especially in NP and PAF.

Conclusions

DKI can be used to assess human lumbar IDD. And DKI was more sensitive to the quantitative detection of early lumbar IDD than T2* mapping.

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the grants from National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 81871332) and Hubei Key Laboratory of Medical Information Analysis and Tumor Diagnosis & Treatment (No. PJS140011708).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Radiology, Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University, 99, Zhangzhidong Road, Wuhan, 430060, Hubei, China

    Feifei Zeng, Yunfei Zha, Liang Li, Dong Xing, Wei Gong & Lei Hu

  2. GE Healthcare China, Beijing, China

    Yang Fan

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  1. Feifei Zeng
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  2. Yunfei Zha
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  3. Liang Li
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Correspondence to Yunfei Zha.

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Zeng, F., Zha, Y., Li, L. et al. A comparative study of diffusion kurtosis imaging and T2* mapping in quantitative detection of lumbar intervertebral disk degeneration. Eur Spine J 28, 2169–2178 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00586-019-06007-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00586-019-06007-z

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