Diagnostic Value and Clinical Application of Diffusion‐Weighted Magnetic Resonance Imaging for Female Pelvic Lesions

Abstract

Pelvic inflammatory disease refers to a group of infectious diseases of the female upper genital tract, often caused by ascending infection of vaginitis and cervicitis, causing endometritis, salpingitis, tubo‐ovarian abscess, pelvic connective tissue inflammation, and/or pelvic peritonitis. PID is the most common and important infectious disease in nonpregnant women of childbearing age, and inflammation in multiple parts often coexists and affects each other. The functional MRI techniques currently used in pelvic floor muscle injury are magnetic resonance diffusion tensor imaging, T2 mapping, and magnetic resonance elastography. Diffusion tensor imaging is a new imaging and postprocessing technology developed on the basis of magnetic resonance diffusion‐weighted imaging. Due to the lack of specificity of clinical symptoms, many subclinical patients are often not detected and diagnosed in time, so it is very difficult to accurately estimate the incidence of PID. This article retrospectively analyzed 72 patients with pelvic inflammatory disease confirmed by surgical pathology from February 2020 to 2022, who had undergone pelvic MRI examination before surgery, including 25 patients with chronic pelvic inflammation (hydrosalpinx), 25 patients with acute pelvic inflammation, and 47 cases (including 21 cases of hydrosalpinx, 19 cases of tubo‐ovarian abscess, and 7 cases of pelvic abscess). The age range was 13 to 59 years old. The clinical data and MRI findings were analyzed, the ADC value of the cystic part of the lesion was measured, and the differences in age, maximum diameter of the lesion, thickness of the vessel wall/separation, and the ADC value of the cystic part of chronic and acute pelvic inflammation were compared. In this part of the cases, there were 25 cases of chronic pelvic inflammation and 47 cases of acute pelvic inflammation. The average ADC value of the cystic component of chronic inflammation was significantly higher than that of acute inflammation, which were (2.86 ± 0.20) × 10 −3 mm 2 /s and (1.07 ± 0.38) ×10 −3 mm 2 /s, respectively, P value <0.001.