Effectiveness of 3 T PROPELLER DUO diffusion-weighted MRI in differentiating sinonasal lymphomas and carcinomas

•ADCs of sinonasal lymphomas were lower than those of carcinomas.•ADCs might effectively differentiate sinonasal lymphomas from carcinomas.•Diffuse large B cell lymphomas had lower ADCs than NK/T cell lymphomas.•No difference was found in diagnostic ability between different b-values settings.•There was no difference in diagnostic ability between different strategies of ROIs.

AimTo evaluate the value of 3 T Periodically rotated overlapping parallel lines with enhanced reconstruction (PROPELLER) DUO diffusion-weighted MRI (DW-MRI) in differentiating sinonasal lymphomas from carcinomas.Materials and methodsPROPELLER DUO DW-MRI was performed in 23 patients with sinonasal lymphomas and 28 patients with carcinomas histologically confirmed at 3 T MRI. Apparent diffusion coefficients (ADCs) were obtained with two different b-values (b = 0 and 700 s/mm2, b = 0 and 1000 s/mm2) and two different regions of interest (ROIs) sampling strategies [whole section (WS), partial section (PS)], respectively. Difference in ADCs between sinonasal lymphomas and carcinomas was evaluated using the independent samples t-test or Mann–Whitney U-test. The utility of ADC thresholds for discriminating between them was evaluated by receiver operating characteristic analysis.ResultsADCs of sinonasal lymphomas (WS ADCb0,700, 0.838 × 10−3 mm2/s) were significantly (p < 0.001) lower than those of carcinomas (WS ADCb0,700, 1.396 × 10−3 mm2/s). Using a WS ADC b0,700 value of 1.040 × 10−3 mm2/s as the threshold value effectively differentiated sinonasal lymphomas from carcinomas with 100% sensitivity, 82.1% specificity, and 82.1% positive and 100% negative predictive values and 90.2% accuracy (b = 0, 700 s/mm2). There was no significant difference in diagnostic ability between different b-values settings (p > 0.05) and different sampling strategies of ROIs (p > 0.05), respectively. Additionally, there was significant differences in the ADCs between diffuse large B-cell lymphomas and natural killer (NK)/T-cell lymphomas (p < 0.05).ConclusionPROPELLER DUO DW-MRI can effectively differentiate sinonasal lymphomas from carcinomas.