Intravoxel incoherent motion imaging kinetics during chemoradiotherapy for human papillomavirus-associated squamous cell carcinoma of the oropharynx: preliminary results from a prospective pilot study

This study aims to identify the temporal kinetics of intravoxel incoherent motion (IVIM) MRI in patients with human papillomavirus-associated (HPV+) oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma. Patients were enrolled under an Institutional Review Board (IRB)-approved protocol as part of an ongoing prospective clinical trial. All patients underwent two MRI studies: a baseline scan before chemoradiotherapy and a mid-treatment scan 3-4 weeks after treatment initiation. Parametric maps representing pure diffusion coefficient (D), pseudo-diffusion coefficient (D*), perfusion fraction (f) and apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) were generated. The Mann-Whitney U-test was used to assess the temporal variation of IVIM metrics. Bayesian quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA) was used to evaluate the extent to which mid-treatment changes in IVIM metrics could be combined to predict sites that would achieve complete response (CR) in multivariate analysis. Thirty-one patients were included in the final analysis with 59 lesions. Pretreatment ADC and D values of the CR lesions (n = 19) were significantly lower than those of non-CR lesions (n = 33). Mid-treatment ADC, D and f values were significantly higher (p