Dynamic contrast enhanced MRI and susceptibility-weighted imaging for diffierentiation of parotid gland tumors: a pilot study

Motivation: MRI is one of the major methods to diagnose parotid gland tumors. Substantial overlap in the appearance of tumors may be seen on anatomic MR images. Goal(s): To assess the usefulness of combined DCE with SWI in the differentiation of benign and malignant tumors. Approach: We assess the value of DCE and ITSS in the differential diagnosis between malignant and benign parotid tumors. Results: Results showed that the differences between malignant and benign tumors in Kep (p=0.024) and ITSS (p<0.01) were statistically significant. Combined with ITSS, the diagnostic performance of Kep was improved for differentiating malignant from benign tumor (AUC 0.718 vs 0.927). Impact: Our current study showed that DCE can elucidate perfusion characteristics of parotid tumors. SWI is a new complementary technique that can detect signal intensity changes from both T2WI and susceptibility differences between tissues. These fndings suggest that SWI and DCE quantitative parameters may facilitate the understanding of the pathophysiological characteristics of parotid tumors.