A Multicompartmental Diffusion Model for Improved Assessment of Whole-Body Diffusion-weighted Imaging Data and Evaluation of Prostate Cancer Bone Metastases

Abstract

Purpose: To develop a multicompartmental signal model for whole-body diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) and apply it to study the diffusion properties of normal tissue and metastatic prostate cancer bone lesions in vivo. Materials and Methods: This prospective study (ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT03440554) included 139 men with prostate cancer (mean age, 70 years ± 9 [SD]). Multicompartmental models with two to four tissue compartments were fit to DWI data from whole-body scans to determine optimal compartmental diffusion coefficients. Bayesian information criterion (BIC) and model-fitting residuals were cal-culated to quantify model complexity and goodness of fit. Diffusion coefficients for the optimal model (having lowest BIC) were used to compute compartmental signal-contribution maps. The signal intensity ratio (SIR) of bone lesions to normal-appearing bone was measured on these signal-contribution maps and on conventional DWI scans and compared using paired t tests (α =.05). Two-sample t tests (α =.05) were used to compare compartmental signal fractions between lesions and normal-appearing bone. Results: Lowest BIC was observed from the four-compartment model, with optimal compartmental diffusion coefficients of 0, 1.1 × 10-3, 2.8 × 10-3, and >3.0 ×10-2 mm2/sec. Fitting residuals from this model were significantly lower than from conventional apparent diffusion coefficient mapping (P