• Kazunobu Tsuji, Shinji Kishi, Tatsuro Tsuchida, Takahiro Yamauchi, Satoshi Ikegaya, Yoshimasa Urasaki, Yasuhiro Fujiwara, Takanori Ueda, Hidehiko Okazawa, and Hirohiko Kimura.
• Department of Radiology, University of Fukui Hospital, Fukui, Japan.
• J Magn Reson Imaging. 2015 Jun 1; 41 (6): 1601-7.

BackgroundTo examine the utility of diffusion-weighted MRI (DW-MRI) for staging and early response to chemotherapy assessment in lymphoma patients as compared with fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography/computed tomography (FDG-PET/CT).MethodsTwenty-eight patients with histologically confirmed malignant lymphoma underwent both MRI and FDG-PET/CT before (pretreatment) and after two courses of chemotherapy (mid-treatment). Staging with MRI (DW-MRI alone and with T2-weighted images) and FDG-PET was compared visually, and the concordance rate (kappa value, κ) was calculated. To evaluate early response to chemotherapy, patients were divided into two groups, lesion-positive (LP) and lesion-negative (LN), based on a proposed original criterion. Progression-free survival (PFS) was compared between the groups using the Kaplan-Meier method.ResultsThe stage diagnosed with DW-MRI alone and with FDG-PET/CT was concordant in 22 patients (κ = 0.71; P < 0.05), and by adding T2-weighted images, the number of concordant patients increased to 26 (κ = 0.90; P < 0.05). On mid-treatment imaging, 19 patients were diagnosed as LN from both modalities. PFS differed significantly between LP and LN on both DW-MRI (P = 0.0013) and FDG-PET/CT (P = 0.037).ConclusionDW-MRI is a promising tool for staging and evaluation of early response to chemotherapy in patients with lymphoma.© 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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