The purposes of this study were to determine if image distortion is less in prostate MR apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) maps generated from a reduced-field-of-view (rFOV) diffusion-weighted-imaging (DWI) technique than from a conventional DWI sequence (CONV), and to determine if the rFOV ADC tumor contrast is as high as or better than that of the CONV sequence. Fifty patients underwent a 3T MRI exam. CONV and rFOV (utilizing a 2D, echo-planar, rectangularly-selective RF pulse) sequences were acquired using b=600, 0s/mm(2). Distortion was visually scored 0-4 by three independent observers and quantitatively measured using the difference in rectal wall curvature between the ADC maps and T2-weighted images. Distortion scores were lower with the rFOV sequence (p<0.012, Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Test, n=50), and difference in distortion scores did not differ significantly among observers (p=0.99, Kruskal-Wallis Rank Sum Test). The difference in rectal curvature was less with rFOV ADC maps (26%±10%) than CONV ADC maps (34%±13%) (p<0.011, Student's t-test). In seventeen patients with untreated, biopsy confirmed prostate cancer, the rFOV sequence afforded significantly higher ADC tumor contrast (44.0%) than the CONV sequence (35.9%), (p<0.0012, Student's t-test). The rFOV sequence yielded significantly decreased susceptibility artifact and significantly higher contrast between tumor and healthy tissue.

We demonstrate that Magnetic Particle Imaging (MPI) enables monitoring of cellular grafts with high contrast, sensitivity, and quantitativeness. MPI directly detects the intense magnetization of iron-oxide tracers using low-frequency magnetic fields. MPI is safe, noninvasive and offers superb sensitivity, with great promise for clinical translation and quantitative single-cell tracking. Here we report the first MPI cell tracking study, showing 200-cell detection in vitro and in vivo monitoring of human neural graft clearance over 87 days in rat brain.

Lower back pain is a common problem frequently encountered without specific biomarkers that correlate well with an individual patient's pain generators. MRI quantification of diffusion and T2 relaxation properties may provide novel insight into the mechanical and inflammatory changes that occur in the lumbosacral nerve roots in patients with lower back pain. Accurate imaging of the spinal nerve roots is difficult because of their small caliber and oblique course in all three planes. Two-dimensional in-plane imaging of the lumbosacral nerve roots requires oblique coronal imaging with large field of view (FOV) in both dimensions, resulting in severe geometric distortions using single-shot echo planar imaging (EPI) techniques. The present work describes initial success using a reduced-FOV single-shot spin-echo EPI acquisition to obtain in-plane diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and T2 mapping of the bilateral lumbar nerve roots at the L4 level of healthy subjects, minimizing partial volume effects, breathing artifacts and geometric distortions. A significant variation in DTI and T2 mapping metrics is also reported along the course of the normal nerve root. The fractional anisotropy is statistically significantly lower in the dorsal root ganglia (0.287 ± 0.068) than in more distal regions in the spinal nerve (0.402 ± 0.040) (p < 10(-5) ). The T2 relaxation value is statistically significantly higher in the dorsal root ganglia (78.0 ± 11.9 ms) than in more distal regions in the spinal nerve (59.5 ± 7.4 ms) (p < 10(-5) ). The quantification of nerve root DTI and T2 properties using the proposed methodology may identify the specific site of any degenerative and inflammatory changes along the nerve roots of patients with lower back pain.

Rationale and objectives

The aim of this work was to compare a high-resolution diffusion-weighted imaging (HR-DWI) acquisition (voxel size = 4.8 mm(3)) to a standard diffusion-weighted imaging (STD-DWI) acquisition (voxel size = 29.3 mm(3)) for monitoring neoadjuvant therapy-induced changes in breast tumors.

Materials and methods

Nine women with locally advanced breast cancer were imaged with both HR-DWI and STD-DWI before and after 3 weeks (early treatment) of neoadjuvant taxane-based treatment. Tumor apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) metrics (mean and histogram percentiles) from both DWI methods were calculated, and their relationship to tumor volume change after 12 weeks of treatment (posttreatment) measured by dynamic contrast enhanced magnetic resonance imaging was evaluated with a Spearman's rank correlation.

Results

The HR-DWI pretreatment 15th percentile tumor ADC (P = .03) and early treatment 15th, 25th, and 50th percentile tumor ADCs (P = .008, .010, .04, respectively) were significantly lower than the corresponding STD-DWI percentile ADCs. The mean tumor HR-ADC was significantly lower than STD-ADC at the early treatment time point (P = .02), but not at the pretreatment time point (P = .07). A significant early treatment increase in tumor ADC was found with both methods (P < .05). Correlations between HR-DWI tumor ADC and posttreatment tumor volume change were higher than the STD-DWI correlations at both time points and the lower percentile ADCs had the strongest correlations.

Conclusion

These initial results suggest that the HR-DWI technique has potential for improving characterization of low tumor ADC values over STD-DWI and that HR-DWI may be of value in evaluating tumor change with treatment.