Hong Kong Med J 2023;29(Suppl 7):S18-23
Four-dimensional diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging for stereotactic body radiation therapy in patients with abdominal cancer: abridged secondary publication
J Cai1, T Li1, HFV Lee2, HC Chang3
1 Department of Health Technology and Informatics, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong SAR, China
2 Department of Clinical Oncology, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China
3 Department of Biomedical Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China
 
 
  1. Compared with T1- and T2-weighted four-dimensional magnetic resonance imaging, four-dimensional diffusion-weighted imaging (4D-DWI) enables higher tumour contrast-to-noise ratio and hence highly consistent gross tumour volume contours and low interobserver errors.
  2. A deep learning–based 4D-DWI yields significant improvements in image quality including tumour contrast-to-noise ratio and image texture.
  3. In patients with abdominal cancer, 4D-DWI demonstrates high detectability with accurate tumour motion and tumour delineation.
  4. 4D-DWI has potential to improve the accuracy of radiotherapy for mobile abdominal cancers and reduce radiation adverse effects.