Malignant versus benign mediastinal lesions: quantitative assessment with diffusion weighted MR imaging

Objectives We aimed to evaluate the performance of diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging in differentiating malignant from benign mediastinal lesions. Methods Fifty-three mediastinal lesions were examined with T1- and T2-weighted (W) conventional images. Then, two diffusion-weighted images were obtained with b = 0 and 1000 s/mm² values and apparent diffusion coefficients (ADC) were calculated. The statistical significance of differences between measurements was tested using the Student- t test. Results The mean ADC of malignant lesions was significantly lower than that of the benign masses ( p