Kunwar Bhatia1, Philippe Garteiser2, Ralph Sinkus2, David Yeung3, Jing Yuan1, Yolanda Lee3, Ann King1, Anil Ahuja1
1Imaging and Interventional Radiology, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, N.T., Hong Kong; 2Department of Radiology and INSERM U773; 3Imaging and Interventional Radiology, Prince of Wales Hospital, Shatin, N.T., Hong Kong
Problem: Conventional imaging has suboptimal diagnostic accuracy for salivary masses. Methods: A study of MR elastography was conducted in nine patients with cytologically-confirmed salivary tumours using a customized mechanical driver and gradient echo MR sequences with fractional motion encoding. Recovered shear moduli (|G*| stiffness) for tumours and normal contralateral glands (controls) were compared using t-tests. Results: Pooled data of |G*| in tumours (0.830.47 kPa) overlapped with controls (0.590.32 kPa)(p=0.23). However, ratios of |G*|tumour:|G*|control for individual patients exceeded 1 in 8/9 cases (1.410.37, p=0.01). Conclusion: Preliminary results suggests that normalized shear moduli on MRE may differentiate salivary tumours from normal glands.
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