Histogram analysis of MR quantitative parameters: are they correlated with prognostic factors in prostate cancer?

To investigate the correlation between quantitative MR parameters and prognostic factors in prostate cancer (PCa). A total of 186 patients with pathologically confirmed PCa who underwent preoperative multiparametric MRI (mpMRI), including synthetic MRI (SyMRI), were enrolled from two medical centers. The histogram metrics of SyMRI [T1, T2, proton density (PD)] and apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) values were extracted. The Mann‒Whitney U test or Student’s t test was employed to determine the association between these histogram features and the prognostically relevant factors. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis was conducted to evaluate the differentiation performance. Spearman’s rank correlation coefficients were calculated to determine the correlations between histogram parameters and the International Society of Urological Pathology (ISUP) grade group as well as pathological T stage. Significant correlations were found between the histogram parameters and the ISUP grade as well as pathological T stage of PCa. Among these histogram parameters, ADC_minimum had the strongest correlation with the ISUP grade (r = − 0.481, p < 0.001), and ADC_Median showed the strongest association with pathological T stage (r = − 0.285, p = 0.008). The ADC_10th percentile exhibited the highest performance in identifying clinically significant prostate cancer (csPCa) (AUC 0.833; 95