Jrg Dpfert1, Andreas Lemke1,
Anja Weidner2, Lothar Rudi Schad1
1Department of Computer Assisted
Clinical Medicine, Heidelberg University, Mannheim, Germany; 2Institute
of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, Heidelberg University, Mannheim, Germany
In
this work, the decrease of the apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) in
cancerous prostate tissue compared to healthy prostate tissue is investigated
using the Intravoxel Incoherent Motion (IVIM) Theory. Moreover , the
extracted parameters and the calculated parameter maps are analyzed with
regard to the differentiation between cancerous and healthy tissue.
Therefore, diffusion weighted images of the prostate of 9 patients with
prostate carcinoma were acquired and evaluated, yielding a significant
decrease of the ADC and the perfusion fraction in cancerous tissue compared
to healthy tissue. The results suggest that the decrease of the ADC primarily
comes from perfusion effects.
Keywords