Thesis (Ph.D.) - Cairo University - Faculty of Medicine - Department of Radio-diagnosis

Objective: to evaluate the role of contrast enhanced MRI with DWIs in differentiating residual/recurrent tumors from post treatment changes in head and neck tumors.Patients & Methods: a prospective study of 71 treated cases of head and neck cancer patients with the mean age of 53.13, evaluated in the National Cancer Institute during the period from March 2018 to March 2021.contrast-enhanced mri imaging with diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) and calculation of the apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) value were performed.results: dwis yielded an accuracy of 88.73%, a sensitivity of 88.10% a specificity of 89.66 % , a positive predictive value (PPV) of 92.50% and a negative predictive value (NPV) of 83.87% in differentiating tumoral tissue from benign post treatment changes. there was a statistically significant difference in dwis of the malignant residual/recurrence group and the benign post treatment changes group (P<0.001). the mean adc value of the malignant residual/recurrence group (1.15 +/-0.37 x10-3 m m2/s) was less than that of the benign post treatment changes group (1.73 +/-0.35 x10-3 mm2/s), and the difference was statistically significant (P <0 .001). conclusion: Diffusion MRI study is an accurate noninvasive technique that can be used for the assessment of treated head and neck cancer patients and may help in avoiding unnecessary invasive procedures in the future

Issued also as CD