Objective: The purpose of this study was to correlate the degree of contrast enhancement on dynamic contrast-enhanced T1-weighted MRI and the relative cerebral blood volume (rCBV) values on T2*-weighted MRI in patients with high-grade brain neoplasms.
Subjects and methods: Ten patients with biopsy-proven high-grade gliomas underwent dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI using T1-weighted fast spoiled gradient-echo technique (TR/TE, 8.3/1.5) during i.v. infusion of 0.1 mmol/kg of MR contrast medium. This sequence was followed within 5 minutes by dynamic susceptibility contrast (DSC) imaging (1,500/80) during i.v. infusion of 0.2 mmol/kg of MR contrast medium. Dynamic contrast-enhanced analysis was performed using the maximum-signal-intensity algorithm, and DSC analysis was performed using the negative enhancement integral program. For each tumor, we performed two comparisons: first, the average dynamic contrast-enhanced and rCBV values within a region of interest drawn around the entire contrast-enhancing tumor on a single image through the center of the lesion and, second, the highest dynamic contrast-enhanced and highest rCBV values within each tumor. Statistical analyses of the first comparison were performed using Pearson's correlation coefficient, R2 correlation coefficient, and Spearman's rank correlation and for the second comparison using Kendall's tau correlation.
Results: The mean signal intensity values ranged between 3.48 and 7.16 SDs above baseline values (mean, 4.89 SDs). The mean rCBV values ranged between 57.9% and 122.7% of the normal lentiform nucleus (mean, 76.6%). The Pearson's correlation coefficient was 0.867, the R2 correlation coefficient was 0.752, and the Spearman's rank correlation was 0.794 (p = 0.001). Dynamic contrast-enhanced values from the region of highest signal intensity ranged between 7.7 and 48.6 SDs above baseline values (mean, 17.3 SDs). The highest rCBV values ranged between 105% and 400% of the normal lentiform nucleus (mean, 292%). The correlation was estimated to be 0.7778 and was statistically significant at the 0.01 level of statistical significance (p = 0.0035).
Conclusion: We found a high correlation between degree of contrast enhancement on dynamic contrast-enhanced images and rCBV values in whole tumors and in regions having the highest degree of contrast enhancement in this small study. Our findings, which suggest that relative permeability and rCBV values may be correlated in high-grade glial neoplasms, deserve further study in a larger patient population.