Magnetic resonance imaging is most frequently used for pre-surgical diagnosis and follow-up in salivary gland neoplasms. As for traditional techniques, dynamic contrast-enhanced and diffusion-weighted imaging are two magnetic resonance sequences commonly used in clinic, in spite of their relatively lower sensitivity and specificity. Recently, a novel magnetic resonance technique, amide proton transfer-MRI (APT-MRI), gets a lot of attention due to its special imaging principle and higher sensitivity and specificity for many human tumors diagnosis. Moreover, some studies applied this new MRI technique successfully to the diagnosis and differential diagnosis of salivary gland neoplasms. In this review, we are going to focus on the basic principle of APT-MRI and its clinical applications in salivary gland neoplasms, with a comparison of traditional MRI sequences. We will also give some prospects based on these preliminary applications in APT-MRI diagnosis for salivary gland neoplasms.
唾液腺肿瘤是常见的唾液腺组织疾病，MRI是其术前诊断及术后随访中最常用的辅助检查手段。其中，传统的动态对比增强及弥散加权成像虽是目前临床普遍使用的MRI技术，然其敏感性与特异性并不高。近年来，一种全新的MRI扫描技术——酰胺质子转移MRI（amide proton transfer-MRI，APT-MRI），因其特殊的成像原理以及在人体多种肿瘤组织检测中所具有的较高的敏感性及特异性而备受关注；同时也有一些研究开始将这一新技术成功应用于唾液腺肿瘤的诊断及良恶性鉴别诊断中。本综述将重点围绕APT-MRI技术原理、APT-MRI与传统MRI技术在唾液腺肿瘤诊断中的优劣比较等内容展开，并基于APT-MRI技术在唾液腺肿瘤诊断中的初步应用提出相应的意见与展望。.
Keywords: Diagnosis; Magnetic resonance imaging; Salivary gland neoplasms.