Diagnostics
Apparent Diffusion Coefficient Histogram Analysis of Adenoid Cystic Carcinoma of the Head and Neck: Correlation with Histological Grade and Exploratory Survival Analysis
By Weiqing Tang, Jingbo Wang, Jiliang Ren and 3 others.
Abstract
Background
In this study, we aimed to evaluate the feasibility of a whole-tumor histogram analysis of apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) values derived from diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) for predicting adenoid cystic carcinoma (ACC) histological grade and solid-component status.
Methods
This retrospective study included 168 patients with primary head and neck ACC who underwent preoperative 3.0 T MRI with DWI, randomly allocated with stratification by grade to a derivation cohort (n = 107) and an internal validation cohort (n = 61). Whole-tumor ADC histogram features were extracted and reduced through correlation analysis, and the two most discriminative features were combined in a logistic regression model. Overall survival was explored using Cox regression.