The Diagnostic Ability of rs-DWI to Detect Subtle Acute Infarction Lesion in the Different Regions of the Brain and the Comparison between Different b-Values

Abstract EN

Objective.

To evaluate the diagnostic ability of rs-DWI to detect subtle acute infarction lesion in the different regions of the brain in comparison to routine DWI and the comparison between different b-values.

Method.

35 acute brain infarction patients were included.

The subtle acute infarction lesions in ss-DWI and rs-DWI sequence were evaluated in 9 anatomical regions of the brain, and the ss-EPI DWI was also acquired with different b-values of 0, 1000, 2000, and 3000s/mm2.

The McNemar test was performed for comparing the diagnostic ability of ss-DWI and rs-DWI and different b-values.

Sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), and negative predictive value (NPV) for the whole brain and in each anatomical region were calculated.

Result.

A total of 406 subtle acute infarction lesions were confirmed.

The ss-DWI detected 338 subtle lesions, out of which 318 were true positive and 20 were false positive lesions.

The rs-DWI detected 386 subtle lesions, out of which 385 were true positive lesions and 1 was true negative lesion.

Sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value in rs-DWI were better than ss-DWI in all anatomical regions of the brain.

In the comparison of different b-values, b2000 was found better among b1000, b2000, and b3000.

Conclusion.

The rs-DWI offers a useful alternative to routine DWI for detecting the subtle acute infarctions, especially in the regions that are susceptible to distortion as in frontal cortex.

In addition, high b-value can also provide benefit by increasing diffusion weighting but further raising can deteriorate image quality as SNR is decreased.