This study aimed to develop whole-lesion apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC)-based entropy-related parameters of cervical cancer to preliminarily assess intratumoral heterogeneity of this lesion in comparison to adjacent normal cervical tissues.A total of 51 women (mean age, 49 years) with cervical cancers confirmed by biopsy underwent 3-T pelvic diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging with b values of 0 and 800 s/mm2 prospectively. ADC-based entropy-related parameters including first-order entropy and second-order entropies were derived from the whole tumor volume as well as adjacent normal cervical tissues. Intraclass correlation coefficient, Wilcoxon test with Bonferroni correction, Kruskal-Wallis test, and receiver operating characteristic curve were used for statistical analysis.All the parameters showed excellent interobserver agreement (all intraclass correlation coefficients  > 0.900). Entropy, entropy(H)0, entropy(H)45, entropy(H)90, entropy(H)135, and entropy(H)mean were significantly higher, whereas entropy(H)range and entropy(H)std were significantly lower in cervical cancers compared to adjacent normal cervical tissues (all P <.0001). Kruskal-Wallis test showed that there were no significant differences among the values of various second-order entropies including entropy(H)0, entropy(H)45, entropy(H)90, entropy(H)135, and entropy(H)mean. All second-order entropies had larger area under the receiver operating characteristic curve than first-order entropy in differentiating cervical cancers from adjacent normal cervical tissues. Further, entropy(H)45, entropy(H)90, entropy(H)135, and entropy(H)mean had the same largest area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.867.Whole-lesion ADC-based entropy-related parameters of cervical cancers were developed successfully, which showed initial potential in characterizing intratumoral heterogeneity in comparison to adjacent normal cervical tissues.

作者：Yue, Guan；Weifeng, Li；Zhuoran, Jiang；Ying, Chen；Song, Liu；Jian, He；Zhengyang, Zhou；Yun, Ge

来源：Academic radiology 2016 年 23卷 12期