Comparison of Unidirectional Diffusion Weighting with Isotropic Diffusion Weighting for the Detection of Prostate Tumors.

Marielle E.P. Philippens¹, Taro Takahara², Greetje Groenendaal¹, Uulke A. van der Heide¹

Both isotropic and unidirectional diffusion weighting imaging (DWI) was applied and the effect on the determination of prostate cancer was studied to assess if unidirectional DWI improves the signal to noise and enables shorter measuring time. Both methods showed similar standard deviations. In the unidirectional ADC maps slightly lower ADC values and less pixels below a threshold of 0.9 10^-3 mm²/s were found than in the isotropic ADC maps. In conclusion, unidirectional DWI did not lead to less noise in the ADC maps and therefore, did not enable shorter measuring times.