BACKGROUND: This research aimed to investigate the value of apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) histogram in differentiating between medulloblastoma and pilocytic astrocytoma in children.

MATERIAL AND METHODS: Thirty-three children with posterior cranial fossa tumor confirmed by operation and pathology participated in this retrospective study, including 18 children with medulloblastoma and 15 children with pilocytic astrocytoma. ADC images of the maximum lay of tumors were selected, and the region of interest was delineated by Mazda software and analyzed by histogram. Histogram characteristic parameters of the 2 tumors were statistically analyzed to determine the significantly different characteristic parameters between the 2 tumor types.

RESULTS: There were significant differences in the mean value, variance, skewness, kurtosis, and 1th, 10th, 50th, and 90th percentiles of 9 characteristic parameters extracted by histogram (P<0.05). The corresponding receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were drawn, in which the mean value and 50th percentile were best identified. When the maximum area under the ROC curve was 1 and the optimal threshold was 137.7 and 125.5, the specificity and sensitivity were both 100%.

CONCLUSIONS: ADC histograms can be used to differentiate between medulloblastoma and pilocytic astrocytoma in children and provide reliable and objective evidence for the differentiation.

Keywords: Astrocytoma, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Medulloblastoma