Preoperative T Staging of Urinary Bladder: Diagnostic Performance of Diffusion-Weighted MR Imaging at 3.0 T

Yoshimitsu Ohgiya¹, Jumpei Suyama¹, Syouei Sai¹, Makoto Saiki¹, Takashi Hashizume¹, Noritaka Seino¹, Masanori Hirose¹, Takehiko Gokan¹

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the ability of DW MR imaging at 3.0T for diagnosing T stage in bladder cancer. Sensitivity and accuracy for differentiating T1 tumors from T2 to T4 tumors and Overall accuracy for diagnosing tumor stage obtained by using T2-weighted plus DW images were significantly better than those obtained by using T2-weighted images alone (P = 0.02). DW images at 3T can provide useful information for evaluating the T stage of bladder cancer, particularly in differentiating T1 or lower tumors from T2 or higher tumors.