الفهرس 
IntroductionOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
This thesis aimed at evaluation of the role of Diffusion-Weighted MRI in the detection and characterization of the musculoskeletal soft tissue tumors and determining whether benign or malignant .The study included thirty patients (21 female and 9 male). Of the 30 cases 16 were benign and 14 were malignant tumors, most of the tumors were involving their lower limbs, other sites include upper limbs and the trunk wall. The DWI was obtained with b values including 0, 400 and 800mm2/second. The Apparent Diffusion Coefficient (ADC) generated by measuring identical images at different b-values and represented as ADC map from which ADC value calculated. The diagnosis was confirmed after the MRI examination by histologic biopsy according to standard histopathological procedures in most of the cases. Our results revealed that the mean ADC value of benign and malignant soft tissue tumors was 1.65 x 10-3 mm2/s and 0.94 x 10-3 mm2/s, respectively. There was a significant difference in the mean ADC value between benign and malignant soft tissue tumors. The mean ADC value of benign was significantly higher than that of malignant soft tissue tumors. The ADC value might be useful for diagnosing the malignancy of nonmyxoid soft tissue tumors that if the ADC value exceeds 1.275 x 10-3 mm2/s in nonmyxoid tumors, the possibility of malignancy is low. SUMMARY - 131 - So we can conclude that MRI is the method of choice in detection and characterization of musculoskeletal soft tissue masses, however the development of new MRI techniques, the DWI with ADC mapping proved to be a valuable non-invasive tool in differentiating benign and malignant soft tissue tumors with highly significant difference between ADC value of benign and malignant tumors especially the nonmyxoid ones.