Tsili AC, et al. – This study was undertaken to investigate the utility of testis diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), to determine normative apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) and fractional anisotropy (FA) values and to evaluate the adequacy of DTI in characterizing testicular pathology. This study shows the feasibility of testis DTI. The data indicated that both ADC and FA significantly differ between testicular lesions and normal testis, although FA did not indicate an incremental diagnostic value compared to ADC in lesion differentiation.

Methods

• In this study, 56 men underwent MRI of the scrotum, including DTI.
• They applied parametric and non-parametric statistical tests to compare the ADC and FA between the cranial, middle and lower thirds of normal testis and between the bilateral testicular thirds.
• Furthermore, comparison between the ADC and FA of normal testis, malignant and benign testicular lesions was conducted.

Results

• There were no significant differences of the ADC and FA in normal testis between the cranial, middle and lower thirds and between the bilateral testicular thirds.
• They observed that ADC was significantly lower in malignancies compared to normal testis (P = 0.006) and benign testicular lesions (P = 0.006).
• It was noted that FA was significantly higher both in malignancies (P = 0.001) and benign lesions (P<0.001) compared to normal testis. FA in malignancies did not differ from FA in benign lesions (P = 0.221).