Comparison of reduced field-of-view DWI and conventional DWI in the assessment of lumbar bone marrow infiltration in patients with acute leukemia

Motivation: To investigate whether reduced field-of-view diffusion-weight imaging (r-FOV DWI) is superior to conventional DWI for the evaluation of bone marrow infiltration in acute leukemia (AL). Goal(s): To compare the imaging quality, apparent diffusion coefficient, and value of assessing bone marrow infiltration between r-FOV DWI and conventional DWI in the lumbar spine of AL. Approach: The image quality and the performance in assessing bone marrow infiltration of the two sequences in AL were compared qualitatively and quantitatively. Results: Compared with conventional DWI, r-FOV DWI provides superior image quality of the lumbar spine in AL patients, thus yielding better performance in assessing bone marrow infiltration. Impact: The findings suggest that r-FOV DWI is a promising technique for reducing image artifacts, improving image quality, and assessing bone marrow infiltration in AL. r-FOV DWI can be proposed as a common sequence for evaluating bone marrow infiltration in AL.