Diffusion Imaging for Prostate Cancer: A Quantitative Comparison of Echo Planar Imaging and Half Fourier Single Shot Turbo Spin Echo Sequences.

Ben Babourina-Brooks¹, Deming Wang¹, Glen Wood², Gary Cowin¹

We aimed to compare two Diffusion Weighted Imaging (DWI) sequences for prostate tumour detection, Echo Planar Imaging (EPI) and Half Fourier Acquisition Single shot Turbo spin Echo (HASTE). The HASTE sequence should have reduced magnetic susceptibility and chemical shift artifacts than EPI. We quantitatively assessed the Apparent Diffusion Coefficient (ADC) of tumours compared to healthy tissue and Receiver Operator Coefficient (ROC) curves in both sequences, using whole mount histology as the gold standard. ADC values of HASTE and EPI were different, which resulted in unique ADC thresholds for each sequence. Both sequences were able to accurately distinguish the PZ from Pca as reported by the high >0.8 area under the curve values from the PZ only curves.