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Can diffusion tensor metrics help in preoperative grading of diffusely infiltrating astrocytomas? A retrospective study of 36 cases

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Abstract

Introduction

Diffusion weighted imaging and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) give information about the amount and directionality of water diffusion occurring in a given tissue. Here we study the role of diffusion tensor metrics including fractional anisotropy (FA) and spherical anisotropy (CS) in preoperative grading of diffusely infiltrating astrocytomas.

Methods

We performed DTI in 38 patients with pathologically proven diffusely infiltrating astrocytomas, who were classified into two groups, i.e., 15 patients with high-grade astrocytoma (HGAs, WHO grade III and IV) and 23 patients with low-grade astrocytoma (LGAs, WHO grade II). We measured maximum FA and minimum CS values in all cases from tumor. Histopathological diagnosis was established in all cases.

Results

The mean maximum FA values were higher in HGA (0.583 ± 0.104) than LGA (0.295 ± 0.058), while mean minimum CS values were lower in HGA (0.42 ± 0.121) than LGA (0.722 ± 0.061). The difference in the diffusion tensor indices between HGA and LGA was found to be statistically significant with P value of <0.001. Keeping cutoff FA value of 0.4, all HGAs showed higher maximum FA values, and all LGAs showed lower maximum FA values. Also, all HGAs showed minimum CS values less than a cutoff value of 0.6, and all LGAs showed minimum CS values higher than 0.6.

Conclusion

Diffusion tensor metrics such as maximum FA and minimum CS can help to differentiate HGA from LGA.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Dr. Sankara Sarma, Additional Professor of Biostatistics, for his advice on statistics.

Conflict of interest statement

We declare that we have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Imaging Sciences and Interventional Radiology, Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology, Trivandrum, 695011, India

    Milan Jolapara, Satya Narayan Patro, Chandrasekharan Kesavadas, Jitender Saini, Bejoy Thomas, Arun Kumar Gupta & Narendra Bodhey

  2. Department of Pathology, Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology, Trivandrum, 695011, India

    Vishnupuri Venkatraman Radhakrishnan

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  1. Milan Jolapara
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  2. Satya Narayan Patro
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  3. Chandrasekharan Kesavadas
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  4. Jitender Saini
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  5. Bejoy Thomas
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  8. Vishnupuri Venkatraman Radhakrishnan
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Correspondence to Chandrasekharan Kesavadas.

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Jolapara, M., Patro, S.N., Kesavadas, C. et al. Can diffusion tensor metrics help in preoperative grading of diffusely infiltrating astrocytomas? A retrospective study of 36 cases. Neuroradiology 53, 63–68 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00234-010-0761-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00234-010-0761-y

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