الفهرس 
Introduction & Aim of the workOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Summary and conclusion
Ovarian tumors; are the second most common gynecological tumor and is the fifth commonest tumor in women.
Although the final diagnosis of an ovarian tumor is based on the histological examination, it is desirable to preoperatively differentiate benign and malignant ovarian lesions in order to decide whether surgery is required, and which type of surgery is appropriate. Thus, it can help avoiding unnecessary surgery especially in postmenopausal women and help deciding for conservative surgery for young ones wishing to preserve childbearing potential.
TVUS is the first imaging modality that can be used for detection of adnexal mass lesion. However,lesion characterization is done with the help of MRI. Conventional MRI provides soft tissue characterization based on different signal intensities and contrast uptake in post contrast images.
Being a cost effective choice, and in addition to its ability for accurate diagnosis, it can replace computed tomography (CT) in preoperative pelvic assessment.
With the development of recent technologies, new functional MRI sequences are being used. Of these, is the diffusion weighted images (DWI). DWI is used in the abdomen and pelvis after it has been established as a useful functional imaging tool in neurologic applications for a number of years.
DWI depends on the fact that water molecules can diffuse freely in low cellular environment, while tissue hyper cellularity causes its restriction, a phenomenon called ‛Brownian motion’. As a result, malignant ovarian tumors due to its hypercellular nature show restriction of diffusion, unlike most benign tumors.
Our study which was conducted on fourty ovarian lesions showed that addition of DWI to the conventional MRI increased the accuracy of the examination.
The recently introduced concept of ”diffusion-weighted whole-body imaging with background body signal suppression”(DWIBS) is apotential tool for detecting peritoneal dissemination of ovarian cancer.Another potential application of DWIBS is in the assessment of radiation and/or chemotherapy efficacy.
In conclusion, the combination of DWI to conventional MRI implies:
It increases the accuracy and the specificity of MRI.
Using a completely noninvasive technique with no radiation exposure.
Cost effective technique (no additional cost to MRI examination), easily added to the MR study protocols with no marked lengthening of examination time.
DWI might be an alternative for contrast administration especially for those were contrast intake is better avoided as during pregnancy.