The combined application of amide proton transfer imaging and diffusion kurtosis imaging for differentiating stage Ia endometrial carcinoma and endometrial polyps.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: This study aims to explore the diagnostic performance of amide proton transfer (APT) imaging combined with diffusion kurtosis imaging (DKI) in differentiating stage Ia endometrial carcinoma (EC) and endometrial polyps (EP). METHODS: All patients were scanned with APT and DKI sequences with 3.0 T MRI before surgery. The MRI data of 32 patients with histopathologically confirmed stage Ia EC and 17 patients with EP were retrospectively analyzed. Amide proton transfer, mean kurtosis (MK) and mean diffusivity (MD) values were measured. ROC curves were employed to evaluate the efficiency of differentiating and diagnosing stage Ia EC and EP, followed by the Delong test to compare the differences between the areas under the curve (AUCs) of each parameter. Additionally, the Pearson correlation analysis was performed to assess the correlation between APT values and MK and MD. RESULTS: The measured APT, MK, and MD values of the patients with stage Ia EC were 2.609 ± 0.504%,0.641 ± 0.113 and 0.904(0.816, 1.108) µm2/ms, while those of patients with EP were1.909 ± 0.418%, 0.495 ± 0.069, and 1.650 (1.458, 1.815) µm2/ms. The AUCs of APT, MK, MD, MK + MD, and APT + MK + MD in differentiating stage Ia EC and EP were.850, 0.879, 0.893, 0.930 and 0.976, respectively. The AUCs of APT + MK + MD were significantly higher than the AUCs of APT or MK (P < 0.05). The APT value was weakly and positively correlated with the MK value (r = 0.299, P = 0.037), while the APT value was moderately and negatively correlated with the MD value (r = -0.520, P < 0.001). CONCLUSION: Both APT and DKI effectively differentiated stage Ia EC and EP; however, when combined, APT and DKI improved the ability to differentiate these diseases, boosting the value of using a combination of these modalities in clinical applications.