Role of DWI in characterization of bone tumors

PurposeTo assess the validity of bone marrow DWI in discrimination between benign and malignant bone tumors.Patients and methodsThe study was conducted on 30 patients who had previous history of primary malignancy and now have suspected bone metastasis. All patients were previously diagnosed vertebral compression fracture by plain radiography, computed tomography, or bone scintigraphy. The examinations were performed on a 1.5 T MR scanner, followed by histopathological examination (gold standard) for correlation with Radiological data.ResultsThe diagnostic value of a restricted pattern by DWI for the discrimination between benign and malignant lesions had proven overall sensitivity 0.94 (95% CI, 0.3–0.1), specificity 0.50 (95% CI, 0.23–0.77) and accuracy 0.73 (95% CI, 0.54–0.88), and that the best cut-off criterion is ADC of ⩽0.67 (J-index, 0.72) with area under the ROC curve (AUC) 0.82, and this means that ⩽0.67 indicates malignant result while >0.67 is defined as benign results with a sensitivity of 94%, specificity of 79% and accuracy of 87%.