Objective:

To determine the diagnostic performance of apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) histogram parameters of 3.0T whole-body diffusion-weighted imaging with background body suppression (WBDWIBS) for predicting response of breast cancer bone metastasis.

Methods:

For this prospective study

25 study participants with breast cancer bone metastasis underwent WBDWIBS before and after therapy. There were 9 patients with progressive disease. The histogram parameters of breast cancer bone metastases before and after treatment were recorded

including mean

standard deviation

skewness

kurtosis

minimum

10%

25%

median

75%

90%

maximum

and the corresponding rate of change. ADC histogram parameters before and after treatment were compared using paired sample t test or Wilcoxon rank-sum test. Two independent sample t-tests or Wilcoxon rank-sum tests were compared between progressive disease and non-progressive disease. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was used to determine the performance of ADC histogram parameters for response prediction.

Results:

On the overall aspect

after therapy

all the histogram parameters except for 10%

standard deviation values were significantly different from those prior to therapy (

P

0.004). On the therapy response aspect

there was no statistical difference between the two groups prior to therapy (

P

0.193). The standard deviation

10%

25% values and corresponding rate of change were statistical different between the two groups (

P

0.024) with reasonable accuracy.

Conclusion:

The 3.0T WBDWIBS with histogram analysis is favorable for predicting therapy response of breast cancer bone metastasis.