More articles from Head & Neck

Thirty-six patients with an initial diagnosis of locoregionally advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma and diffusional kurtosis imaging acquisitions before and after neoadjuvant chemotherapy were enrolled. Patients were divided into respond-versus-nonrespond groups after neoadjuvant chemotherapy and residual-versus-nonresidual groups after radiation therapy. Receiver operating characteristic analysis indicated that setting pre-D_50th = 0.875 x 10^-3 mm²/s as the cutoff value could result in optimal diagnostic performance for neoadjuvant chemotherapy response prediction (area under the curve = 0.814, sensitivity = 0.70, specificity = 0.92), while the post-K_90th = 1.035 (area under the curve = 0.829, sensitivity = 0.78, specificity = 0.72) was optimal for radiation therapy response prediction. Histogram analysis of diffusional kurtosis imaging may potentially predict the neoadjuvant chemotherapy and short-term radiation therapy response in locoregionally advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma.