Role of Apparent diffusion coefficient value in Diffusion Weighted imaging of MRI to assessment of radiotherapy efficiency in the patient with glioma tumor during treatment

Introduction: Glioma is the most common primary malignancy of cerebral neoplasms in adults, which in spite of therapeutic significant efforts, has a very poor prognosis. The current standard treatment of these patients generally includes surgery and radiotherapy or concurrent chemoradiotherapy with 6 courses of adjuvant use of temozolomide tabs. During these years, the nervous imaging has been valuable for glioma management, which is used to diagnose and characterize tumors, as well as to design neurosurgery and radiotherapy and to achieve treatment efficacy. Among the MR imaging techniques, Diffusion Weighted Imaging (DWI) can be used to assessment of treatment response in glioma tumors. Materials and Methods: In this study, 10 patients were selected with primary glioma tumor histopathology, who had the inclusion criteria. The patients were subjected to DWI imaging in three times during treatment until the end of the treatment, the data were analyzed and the mean ADC ratio Value from DWI Images were extracted. Results: The Patients were divided into two independent groups including patients undergoing chemotherapy and radiotherapy, and patients undergoing radiotherapy. In both groups, data normality was proved (P<0.05), a significant difference was obtained between each stage of pre- with post-treatment stage. According to the observed results, in addition to observing of significant relationship between each of the parameters post- and pre- treatment, the mean ADC ratio was significantly increased in both treatment groups. Conclusion: Considering the significant of the mean ADC ratio from the DWI images in post- treatment compared to the pre-treatment, these parameters may be used as biomarkers for the treatment response beside of conventional MRI images.