Prostate Cancer : Are There Differences Between Native Diffusion-Weighted Images and the Apparent Diffusion Coefficient Map in Tumor Detection and Characterization?

Andrew B. Rosenkrantz¹, Xiangtian Kong², Ben Niver¹, Samir S. Taneja³, Jonathan Melamed²

21 patients with prostate cancer underwent prostate MRI including DWI at 1.5T prior to prostatectomy. The native diffusion-weighted images (nDWI) and ADC map were compared, using prostatectomy as reference standard. Compared with nDWI, the ADC map demonstrated significantly more tumor foci as well as greater relative contrast between tumor and benign PZ. Among tumors visible on the ADC map, there was a trend toward greater Gleason score and tumor size for those also visible on nDWI. Our data supports the importance of review of the ADC map in addition to nDWI given possible greater tumor visibility on the ADC map.