Greater diffusion weighting is generally thought to increase performance
of MRI for prostate cancer detection. We compared acquired high b-value (1200
s/mm2) diffusion-weighted MRI against b-1200 images synthesized from
b ≤ 800 acquisitions for
detection of peripheral zone lesions in the prostate for 50 consecutive patients
undergoing prostate MRI and biopsy using two blinded independent readers.
Although subjective image quality was rated slightly but significantly worse
for synthesized DWI compared to acquired DWI images, no significant difference
in detection of peripheral zone lesions, PI-RADS version 2 lesion
categorization, or confidence scores of interpretation were observed.
