Multiple Sclerosis: Does the Apparent Diffusion Coefficient Have a Diagnostic Efficiency ýn Active - Inactive Demyelinating Plaques?

INTRODUCTION: In multiple sclerosis (MS) patients, in the evaluation of active and inactive plaques, the contribution of Apparent Diffusion Coefficient (ADC) measurements to the diagnosis was investigated.
METHODS: A total of 88 patients, 66 women and 22 men, were examined in this study. The patients’ ages ranged from 19 to 53; the median age was 30.5 ±8.1. ADC measurements were taken of every plaque from active and inactive plaques using contrast enhancement (CE) Magnetic Resonance Ýmaging MRI. ADC measurements were considered active (92) or inactive (230) in accordance to their contrast enhancement, and specificity and sensitivity values were checked.
RESULTS: We examined and comparison the descriptive statistics results of MS plaques in relation to the active and inactive groups in terms of ADC measurement values. Accordingly, the averages for the active and inactive groups, respectively, were found to be 1.011 and 1.245, and the difference was statistically significant between these two averages (p<0.01). Accordingly, our study shows that ADC measurements are higher in the inactive group.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: ADC measurements can be a useful imaging modality in the differentiation of MS plaques in diffusion-weighted imaging.