Proceedings of the Korean Society of Medical Physics Conference (한국의학물리학회:학술대회논문집)

Korean Society of Medical Physics (한국의학물리학회)
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Clinical Applications of 3T MR Spectroscopy

  • Choe, Bo-Young (Departments of Biomedical Engineering, College of Medicine, The Catholic University of Korea) ;
  • Baik, Hyun-Man (Departments of Biomedical Engineering, College of Medicine, The Catholic University of Korea) ;
  • Chu, Myung-Ja (Departments of Biomedical Engineering, College of Medicine, The Catholic University of Korea) ;
  • Jeun, Sin-Soo (Departments of Neurosurgery, College of Medicine, The Catholic University of Korea) ;
  • Kang, Sei-Kwon (Department of Radiology, Yonsei University) ;
  • Chung, Sung-Taek (Medinus Co., Ltd.) ;
  • Park, Chi-Bong (Veterinary College Konkuk University) ;
  • Oh, Chang-Hyun (Department of Electronics and Information Engineering, Korea University) ;
  • Lee, Hyoung-Koo (Departments of Biomedical Engineering, College of Medicine, The Catholic University of Korea)
  • Published : 2002.09.01
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Abstract

The purpose of this study was to assess clinical proton MR spectroscopy (MRS) as a noninvasive method for evaluating brain tumor malignancy at 3T high field system. Using 3T MRI/MRS system, localized water-suppressed single-voxe1 technique in patients with brain tumors was employed to evaluate spectra with peaks of N-acetyl aspartate (NAA), choline-containing compounds (Cho), creatine/phosphocreatine (Cr) and lactate. On the basis of Cr, these peak areas were quantificated as a relative ratio. The variation of metabolites measurements of the designated region in 10 normal volunteers was less than 10%. Normal ranges of NAA/Cr and Cho/Cr ratios were 1.67${\pm}$018 and 1.16${\pm}$0.15, respectively. NAA/Cr ratio of all tumor tissues was significantly lower than that of the normal tissues (p=0.005), but Cho/Cr ratio of all tumor tissue was significantly higher (p=0.001). Cho/Cr ratio of high-grade gliomas was significantly higher than that of low-grade gliomas (P=0.001). Except 4 menigiomas, lactate signal was observed in all tumor cases. The present study demonstrated that the neuronal degradation or loss was observed in all tumor tissues. Higher grade of brain tumors was correlated with higher Cho/Cr ratio, indicating a significant dependence of Cho levels on malignancy of gliomas. Our results suggest that clinical proton MR spectroscopy could be useful to predict tumor malignancy.

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