Dual-stage correlated diffusion imaging

Diffusion imaging has become a powerful diagnostic imaging tool for the detection of prostate cancer. Recently, a new form of diffusion imaging called correlated diffusion imaging (CDI) was introduced, where the tissue being imaged is characterized by the joint correlation of diffusion signal attenuation across multiple gradient pulse strengths and timings. While CDI has been shown to provide a strong signal delineation between cancerous tissue and healthy tissue within the prostate gland, it does not capture anatomical information. As such, additional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) modalities are required to be studied by the radiologists at the same time as CDI to provide anatomical context for accurate cancer localization within the prostate gland. In this study, we address this issue by introducing a new form of CDI called dual-stage correlated diffusion imaging (D-CDI), where an additional signal mixing stage is performed between the correlated diffusion signal from the first signal mixing stage and an auxiliary diffusion signal to incorporate anatomical context. Quantitative evaluation using sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy measures, and visual assessment by an expert radiologist for datasets of 13 patient cases with confirmed prostate cancer suggest that D-CDI not only provides strong delineation between healthy and cancerous tissues, it allows for accurate cancer localization in the prostate gland without the need for additional MRI modalities to be studied.