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Special MRI Identifies Brain Cancer Early
Reported
March 25, 2008
(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- A special type of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)
may help find brain cancer earlier than traditional imaging.
Researchers in London find perfusion MRI shows changes in blood volume in
the brain that often come before brain tumors turn cancerous. It's able to
spot these changes a year or more before other markers of brain cancer can
be found.
Primary brain tumors called low-grade gliomas grow slowly over years. Most
turn into high-grade gliomas, which have a poor prognosis. Brain tumors can
lead to angiogenesis -- the formation of new blood vessels. These abnormal
vessels mean changes in blood volume and flow.
During the study, 13 patients with low-grade gliomas had perfusion MRI and
contrast-enhanced MRI every six months for up to three years. Researchers
wanted to see whether changes in relative cerebral blood volume (rCBV) are
an indicator of future cancer.
Results show in the patients with tumor transformation, the mean rCBV
increased from 1.94 at the beginning of the study to 3.14 12 months before
the transformation to 3.65 six months before the transformation and to 5.36
when the transformation was diagnosed.
The findings suggest significant changes in rCBV are an important marker of
malignant change in gliomas and reflect the earliest stages of the
transformation process. The study also shows perfusion MRI can detect these
changes long before the traditional contrast-enhanced MR images can.
"We have shown that perfusion MRI provides a noninvasive means of assessing
the risk of transformation in individual patients," study co-author Adam
Waldman, Ph.D., was quoted as saying. "Increasing perfusion can be regarded
as an early warning sign of impending malignant transformation that can
assist radiologists in identifying those patients most likely to benefit
from earlier or more aggressive treatment."
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SOURCE: Radiology, 2008;247 |
