Role of Diffusion Weighted Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Stratifying Tumor Aggressiveness in Papillary Thyroid Carcinoma

Amita Shukla-Dave¹, Yonggang Lu¹, Ashok R. Shaha¹, Hilda E. Stambuk¹, Andre E. Moreira¹, Yousef Mazaheri¹, Joseph O. Deasy¹, R. Michael Tuttle¹

There remains a pressing need of non-invasive imaging methods to identify patients with aggressive tumors in papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC). This study evaluates whether diffusion weighted magnetic resonance imaging (DW-MRI) has potential to stratify tumor aggressiveness in PTC. Twelve PTC patients underwent pretreatment DW-MRI at 1.5T. The ADC (apparent diffusion coefficient) and normalized ADC (nADC) were calculated from the DW-MRI data. All patients underwent surgery. Tumor aggressiveness was defined at pathology. nADC was able to differentiate between tumors with and without aggressive features. The study suggests nADC as a potential surrogate biomarker for stratifying tumor aggressiveness in PTC.