Objective: DCE-MRI is an imaging technique that reflects the blood perfusion status of the tissue’s microcirculation. The purpose of this article is to explore the clinical value of dynamic contrast-enhanced (DCE)-MRI in distinguishing benign and malignant tongue lesions and the internal heterogeneity of a tumour.
Methods: The patients were divided into a tongue cancer group (22 patients) and a glossitis group (7 patients) based on the pathology results. All of the patients underwent DCE-MRI examination.
Results: The results of this study showed that the volume transfer constant (Ktrans), rate constant (Kep), contrast enhancement ratio (CER) and initial area under the gadolinium contrast agent concentration time curve (IAUGG) values of the tongue cancer group were significantly higher than those of the glossitis group, and the difference was statistically significant (P < 0.05). However, the extravascular extracellular volume fraction (Ve), fractional plasma volume (fPV), maximum slope (MaxSlope), and bolus arrival time (BAT) values measured by DCE-MRI in the tongue cancer group were not significantly different from those in the glossitis group (P > 0.05). The results of this study showed that the Ktrans, Kep, and IAUGG values measured by DCE-MRI had a good ability to distinguish tongue inflammation from tumours and Ktrans threshold of 0.484 has the best discriminative ability among them. The mean Ktrans values of stage I–II lesions were significantly higher than that of stage III–IV lesion (p =  0.045).
Conclusion: DCE-MRI is effective in distinguishing between benign and malignant tongue lesions and the internal heterogeneity of the tumour; it is worth following up in a larger study.
Clinical Registration Number: Research registry 6393.
Keywords: DCE-MRI, tongue cancer, tumour heterogeneity, tumour microenvironment, tumour precision diagnosis and treatment