Separate calculation of DW-MRI in assessing therapeutic effect in liver tumors in rats

Therapy Monitoring with Functional and Molecular MR Imaging

Cancer therapy is mainly based on different combinations of surgery, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy. Additionally, targeted therapies (designed to disrupt specific tumor hallmarks, such as angiogenesis, metabolism, proliferation, invasiveness, and immune evasion), hormonotherapy, immunotherapy, and interventional techniques have emerged as alternative oncologic treatments. Conventional imaging techniques and current response criteria do not always provide the necessary information regarding therapy success particularly to targeted therapies. In this setting, MR imaging offers an attractive combination of anatomic, physiologic, and molecular information, which may surpass these limitations, and is being increasingly used for therapy response assessment.

Science to practice: can intravoxel incoherent motion diffusion-weighted MR imaging be used to assess tumor response to antivascular drugs?

In the study by Joo et al (1), perfusion-sensitive parameters derived from diffusion-weighted (DW) magnetic resonance (MR) imaging using intravoxel incoherent motion (IVIM) analysis were significantly decreased 4 hours after administration of a vascular disrupting agent (VDA) (CKD-516), in keeping with drug-induced vascular collapse. A larger decrease in the perfusion-sensitive IVIM parameters was correlated with smaller tumor size increase 7 days after treatment.