Feasibility of intravoxel incoherent motion in the assessment of tumor microvasculature and blood–brain barrier integrity: a case-based evaluation of gliomas

Abstract

Objective To evaluate the feasibility of intravoxel incoherent motion (IVIM) in assessing blood-brain barrier (BBB) integrity and microvasculature in tumoral tissue of glioma patients. Methods Images from 8 high-grade and 4 low-grade glioma patients were acquired on a 3 T MRI scanner. Acquisition protocol included pre-and post-contrast T1-and T2-weighted imaging, FLAIR, dynamic susceptibility contrast (DSC), and susceptibility-weighted imaging (SWI). In addition, IVIM was acquired with 15 b-values and fitted under the non-negative least square (NNLS) model to output the diffusion (D) and pseudo-diffusion (D*) coefficients, perfusion fraction (f), and f times D* (fD*) maps. Results IVIM perfusion-related maps were sensitive to (1) blood flow and perfusion alterations within the microvasculature of brain tumors, in agreement with intra-tumoral susceptibility signal (ITSS); (2) enhancing areas of BBB breakdown in agreement with DSC maps as well as areas of BBB abnormality that was not detected on DSC maps; (3) enhancing perfusion changes within edemas; (4) detecting early foci of increased perfusion within low-grade gliomas. ConclusionThe results suggest IVIM may be a promising approach to delineate tumor extension and progression in size, and to predict histological grade, which are clinically relevant information that characterize tumors and guide therapeutic decisions in patients with glioma.

ACID: A Comprehensive Toolbox for Image Processing and Modeling of Brain, Spinal Cord, and Post-mortem Diffusion MRI Data

“…Table 6 provides the computation times for selected ACID functions on a typical brain and spinal cord dMRI dataset. (Deppe et al, 2016a(Deppe et al, , 2016bDossi et al, 2018;Kugler & Deppe, 2018) and Parkinson's disease (Szturm et al, 2021), and to assess gliomas (Paschoal et al, 2022;Raja et al, 2016). ACID has also been used to investigate spinal cord white matter following spinal cord injury (David et al, 2019(David et al, , 2021(David et al, , 2022Grabher et al, 2016;Huber et al, 2018;Seif et al, 2020;Vallotton et al, 2021).…”

“…ACID has been used in a variety of clinical and neuroscience research, e.g., in dMRI studies assessing cerebral changes in patients with multiple sclerosis (Deppe et al, 2016a(Deppe et al, , 2016bDossi et al, 2018;Kugler & Deppe, 2018) and Parkinson's disease (Szturm et al, 2021), and to assess gliomas (Paschoal et al, 2022;Raja et al, 2016). We have also used ACID to investigate spinal cord white matter following spinal cord injury (Büeler et al, 2024;David et al, 2019David et al, , 2021David et al, , 2022Grabher et al, 2016;Huber et al, 2018;Seif et al, 2020;Vallotton et al, 2021).…”

The imaging principle of IVIM and its value in the diagnosis and treatment of ischemic stroke

“…IVIM can also assist BOLD in imaging and provide higher resolution, mainly because IVIM is more sensitive to capillary blood flow than BOLD Published by Francis Academic Press, UK -14- [15,27] . IVIM is also widely used in the classification of breast cancer [28][29][30] and the differentiation of high and low grade gliomas [31][32][33][34] .…”