Assessment of angiographic vascularity of meningiomas with dynamic susceptibility contrast-enhanced perfusion-weighted imaging and diffusion tensor imaging

Abstract

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: The roles of DTI and dynamic susceptibility contrast-enhanced-PWI in predicting the angiographic vascularity of meningiomas have not been studied.Weaimed to investigate if these 2 techniques could reflect the angiographic vascularity of meningiomas. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Thirty-two consecutive patients with meningiomas who had preoperative dynamic susceptibility contrastenhanced- PWI, DTI, and conventional angiography were retrospectively included. The correlations between angiographic vascularity of meningiomas, classified with a 4-point grading scale, and the clinical or imaging variables - age and sex of patient, as well as size, CBV, fractional anisotropy, and ADC of meningiomas - were analyzed. The meningiomas were dichotomized into high-vascularity and lowvascularity groups. The differences in clinical and imaging variables between the 2 groups were compared. Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis was used to determine the diagnostic performance of these variables. RESULTS: In meningiomas, angiographic vascularity correlated positively with CBV but negatively with fractional anisotropy. High-vascularity meningiomas demonstrated significantly higher CBV but lower fractional anisotropy as compared with low-vascularity meningiomas. In differentiating between the 2 groups, the area under the curve values were 0.991 for CBV and 0.934 for fractional anisotropy on receiver operating characteristic curve analysis. CONCLUSIONS: CBV and fractional anisotropy correlate well with angiographic vascularity of meningiomas. They may differentiate between low-vascularity and high-vascularity meningiomas.