الفهرس 
AnatomyOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Head and neck masses in pediatric age group, one of the most important medical issues, as these patients are in need for accurate differentiation and discrimination of neck masses aiming for early accurate diagnosis , staging and better therapeutic planning to get favorable final outcome and follow up.
There are many imaging modalities could be used for assessment of neck masses, like U/S which is considered a preliminary study for discrimination of the neck masses and lymph nodes, CT scan is considered the classic study for assessment of the neck giving fair morphological and anatomical details, also PET/CT is considered dual study that assesses both morphological and metabolic characters of the lesions through FDG isotope injection and uptake.
In recent studies, it was reported that, in comparison with conventional MRI or PET/CT, ADC values resulted in lower false results essentially in the post-therapeutic assessment.
DW-MRI has many advantages over other imaging techniques. It is noninvasive, no ionizing radiation exposure and does not require administration of contrast medium with short examination time, especially when using parallel imaging that reduces artifacts. Furthermore, both morphological and physiological assessment can be made during Diffusion MRI through assessment of DWI, ADC map and estimation of ADC values which is magnetic field independent.
Conclusion: We conclude from this study that Diffusion MRI study is a significant, accurate, fast, non invasive and non enhanced technique that can be used for characterization of malignant lesions of the head and neck region and to differentiate it from benign lesions relying on signal of the lesion on DWI, ADC map and ACD value.
Also Diffusion-weighted MR imaging with ADC measurements has revealed promising results in differentiation of residual / recurrent head and neck tumors from post therapeutic changes as it has better results than conventional MR imaging. Also ADC value can be used as a guide for tissue sampling. The technique has very short scanning time and adds no extra cost to patients who are already undergoing MR imaging. So we recommend applying DWI as a routine sequence with conventional MRI in initial assessment of neck masses as well as post therapeutic assessment and follow-up.