Investigating tissue microstructure of prostate cancer using Linear Multi-scale Modeling of diffusion MRI data

Linear Multi-scale Modeling (LMM) is an advanced diffusion-weighted imaging(DWI) technique that uses multi-shell, multi-diffusion-time DWI data to estimate tissue microstructure parameters, including volume fractions of restricted and hindered water compartments over a range of length scales and orientation distribution information. Here,we apply the LMM framework to characterize prostate cancer(PCa) lesions and correlate our results with histology. Within the histopathologically proven cancerous lesions we observed a significantly increased fraction of restricted diffusion, particularly within the 2μm and 7μm sized water compartments. LMM may enable the development of distinct diffusion microstructural signatures of PCa to facilitate diagnosis of clinically significant PCa lesions.