Fig. 5

Diffusion analysis in a rectal tumour. Analysis of the relationship between signal attenuation in tissues with different b-values. Theorical (tCURVE) and real (rCURVE) curves of signal decay are different. (a) At low b-values (L), the signal is suppressed by small diffusion weightings (e.g., b value ≤ 100 s/mm²), which can be attributed to microcapillary perfusion, and intravoxel incoherent motion (IVIM) analysis may quantify the diffusion and perfusion effects separately. At medium b values (M) (100-1000 s/mm²), signal decay usually shows a Gaussian diffusion behavior, which would result in linear decay of the natural logarithm of the DWI signal intensity (SI) as the b-value increases, and subsequent quantification can be performed using a mono exponential analysis. On its part, at high b-values (e.g., >2000 s/mm²) (H), diffusion restriction is mainly secondary to cellularity, and quantification of non-gaussianity for water diffusion is possible based on diffusional kurtosis imaging (DKI), which may evaluate tissue structure that creates diffusion barriers and compartments. Tumours usually show an increased kurtosis. Pictured is an example of bi-exponential analysis of diffusion in a rectal tumour (arrow) (b), which allows the calculation of perfusion-related parameters, including the perfusion fraction (f) and perfusion-free diffusion (D) (top row), and an image of tumour kurtosis (bottom right)