Advanced MR Imaging of Gliomas: An Update

Abstract

Recent advances in the treatment of cerebral gliomas have increased the demands on noninvasive neuroimaging for the diagnosis, therapeutic planning, tumor monitoring, and patient outcome prediction. In the meantime, improved magnetic resonance (MR) imaging techniques have shown much potentials in evaluating the key pathological features of the gliomas, including cellularity, invasiveness, mitotic activity, angiogenesis, and necrosis, hence, further shedding light on glioma grading before treatment. In this paper, an update of advanced MR imaging techniques is reviewed, and their potential roles as biomarkers of tumor grading are discussed.

Proton MR spectroscopic imaging of human glioblastomas at 1.5 Tesla

“…In previous study it was reported that the 45% increase of tCho indicates tumor progression, while an increase of up to 35% indicates its stable status (Pinker et al 2012). The direct correlation was also declared between the tCho/tNAA, tCho/tCr and the proliferation marker Ki-67 (Guillevin et al 2008;Toyooka et al 2008) which is a predictor of aggressive clinical tumor manifestation (Horska and Barker 2010;Kao et al 2013). In this study, in addition to elevated values of tCho/tCr and tCho/tNAA decreased levels of tNAA/tCr were also observed in glioblastoma-affected brain tissue compared to the healthy areas.…”

“…Glioblastomas are usually described as intracranial tumors with quantitatively the highest rate of carcinogenesis and angiogenesis (Law 2009;Wijnen 2010;Kao et al 2013). According to the literature, the typical glioblastomas manifestatio n is Correlation analysis of tCho/tCr and tNAA/tCr with respect to brain tissue area.…”

“…Since the tNAA is synthesized in neuronal mitochondria it is regarded as a marker of neuronal viability and function (Soares and Law 2009;Barker 2010). However, tNAA is not a sufficiently specific marker for glioblastomas (Laprie et al 2008;Horska and Barker 2010), its decline reliably indicates the loss of healthy neurons in the tumor-affected brain tissue (Glunde and Bhujwalla 2011;Kao et al 2013). To the tCho signal mainly phosphocholine contributes, and in a lesser extent glycerophosphocholine, free choline, and acetylcholine (Horska and Barker 2010;McKnight and Wladman 2010).…”

Potential Utility of Visually AcceSAble Rembrandt Images Assessment in Brain Astrocytoma Grading

“…12 Advanced MRI techniques have shown potentials in evaluating the key pathological features of the glioma and can potentially help tumor grading. [13][14][15][16][17][18] For example, parameters derived from diffusion weighted imaging and diffusion kurtosis imaging contributed to discrimination between high-grade and low-grade gliomas. 19 Furthermore, histological grading is more and more refined by genetic characteristics of astrocytomas, which has been partially incorporated in the latest tumor classifications.…”

Near-infrared fluorescence heptamethine carbocyanine dyes mediate imaging and targeted drug delivery for human brain tumor

“…Due to high resistance to chemotherapy and radiotherapy, early surgical intervention after tumor detection by imaging is the standard first-line treatment for most types of brain tumors [1, 2]. The effectiveness of current diagnostics, including computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and 18 F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (FDG-PET) [3, 4], is limited by insufficient specificity and sensitivity, due in part to the background tissue autofluorescence, tissue metabolism, and limited resolution and depth of signal penetration [5, 6]. These limitations may result in significant errors when patients are subjected to imaging for tumor diagnosis, prognosis, and follow-up of therapeutic responses and recurrence.…”