[Diagnostic value of high-field MRI for Peyronie's disease].

Objective: To analyze the MRI manifestations of Peyronie's disease and investigate the value of high-field MRI in the diagnosis of the disease.

METHODS: Using a small surface coil, we performed 3.0 Tesla MRI for 14 patients with clinically diagnosed Peyronie's disease. The MRI protocol included routine sequences (T1WI, T2WI, and enhanced T1WI) and susceptibility-weighted imaging (SWI). Each patient had received 2－4 penile ultrasound examinations previously. We compared the MRI findings with the results of ultrasonography.

RESULTS: MRI manifested 25 penile plaques in the 14 patients, 3 (7 plaques) with inflammation, 4 (8 plaques) with fibrosis, and the other 7 (10 plaques) with calcification displaying a low signal intensity on SWI. Ultrasonography had revealed the 10 calcified plaques in all the 20 examinations, but exhibited the 7 inflammatory and 8 fibrotic ones in only 3 of the 23 examinations. The combination of MRI SWI sequences was necessitated for the detection of calcified plaques and achieved higher detection rates than ultrasonography for inflammatory and fibrotic plaques (P<0.05).

CONCLUSIONS: High-field MRI has high sensitivity and accuracy in the diagnosis of Peyronie's disease, which can effectively display penile plaques of different nature in the early stage through multi-parametric sequences.