Effects of regions of interest methods on apparent coefficient measurement of the parotid gland in early Sjögren's syndrome at 3T MRI.

BACKGROUND: The apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) has been used to assess parotid gland abnormalities in Sjögren's syndrome (SS) patients; however, few data exist on the influence of region of interest (ROI) methods on ADC measurements.
PURPOSE: To assess the influence of ROI methods on ADC measurement, and their diagnostic ability in detecting parotid gland abnormalities in early SS patients.
MATERIAL AND METHODS: Thirteen early SS patients underwent parotid gland diffusion-weighted imaging scans at a 3.0 T MR unit. Two readers independently measured the parotid gland ADC value using three different ROIs (whole-gland [WG], single-slice [SS], and reader-based circular [RBC]). The ADC value based on three different ROIs (ADC-ROIWG, ADC-ROISS, ADC-ROIRBC) were compared between the SS group and a matched healthy control (HC) group (n = 19). Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves and intra-class correlation coefficients (ICC) were used to determine the diagnostic ability and reproducibility of the parameters.
RESULTS: The ADC-ROIWG, ADC-ROISS, and ADC-ROIRBC in the SS group were all significantly higher than those in HC group (all P < 0.05). The ADC-ROIWG showed better diagnostic ability than did ADC-ROIRBC (P = 0.0200), while no significant difference was found between ADC-ROIWG and ADC-ROISS (P = 0.4636). The ROIWG method showed the best inter- and intra-reader agreement (ICC, 0.902 and 0.928, respectively), followed by ROISS and ROIRBC.
CONCLUSION: The ROI methods can influence the parotid gland ADC measurements and their diagnostic ability. Considering our results, we suggest using in clinical practice single-slice ROIs to measure the ADC of the parotid gland. © The Foundation Acta Radiologica 2016.