To determine whether intravoxel incoherent motion (IVIM) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) could detect parotid gland abnormalities in Sjögren's syndrome (SS) patients who were not identified by conventional MRI.
Ten consecutive patients with clinically proven SS who were not identified by conventional MRI were assessed by IVIM MRI with a 3.0T MRI scanner. Quantitative parameters (tissue diffusivity, D; pseudodiffusion coefficient, D*; perfusion fraction, f) derived from IVIM MRI were compared between the SS group and healthy control group (n = 15). A receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was used to evaluate the diagnostic value of each significant parameter.
Excellent inter- and intrareader agreements were obtained during the measurement of D, f, and D* values (interreader, 0.980, 0.942, and 0.883; intrareader, 0.991, 0.952, and 0.896, respectively). All three parameters of the SS group were significantly higher than those of the healthy group (D, 1.049 ± 0.056 × 10(-3) mm(2) /s vs. 0.976 ± 0.116 × 10(-3) mm(2) /s, P = 0.012; D*, 20.410 ± 1.786 × 10(-3) mm(2) /s vs. 18.764 ± 2.433 × 10(-3) mm(2) /s, P = 0.013; f, 0.207 ± 0.003 vs. 0.182 ± 0.002, P = 0.004). ROC analysis showed that the f value had the best diagnostic performance (AUC, 0.712; Sensitivity, 0.80; Specificity, 0.57; Cutoff value, 0.185) in detecting the parotid gland abnormalities in early SS patients.
IVIM MRI detected parotid gland abnormalities in early-stage SS patients. J. Magn. Reson. Imaging 2016;43:1455-1461.