Whole Tumor Histogram-profiling of Diffusion-Weighted Magnetic Resonance Images Reflects Tumorbiological Features of Primary Central Nervous System Lymphoma

Stefan Schob; Benno Münch; Julia Dieckow; Ulf Quäschling; Karl-Titus Hoffmann; Cindy Richter; Nikita Garnov; Clara Frydrychowicz; Matthias Krause; Hans-Jonas Meyer; Alexey Surov

doi:10.1016/j.tranon.2018.02.006

Whole Tumor Histogram-profiling of Diffusion-Weighted Magnetic Resonance Images Reflects Tumorbiological Features of Primary Central Nervous System Lymphoma

Transl Oncol. 2018 Apr;11(2):504-510. doi: 10.1016/j.tranon.2018.02.006. Epub 2018 Mar 6.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Department for Neuroradiology, University Hospital Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany. Electronic address: Stefan.Schob@Medizin.Uni-Leipzig.de.
² Department for Neuroradiology, University Hospital Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany.
³ Eichamt Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany.
⁴ Department for Neuropathology, University Hospital Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany.
⁵ Clinic for Neurosurgery, University Hospital Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany.
⁶ Clinic for Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology, University Hospital Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany.

Abstract

Purpose: Diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) quantifies motion of hydrogen nuclei in biological tissues and hereby has been used to assess the underlying tissue microarchitecture. Histogram-profiling of DWI provides more detailed information on diffusion characteristics of a lesion than the standardly calculated values of the apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC)-minimum, mean and maximum. Hence, the aim of our study was to investigate, which parameters of histogram-profiling of DWI in primary central nervous system lymphoma can be used to specifically predict features like cellular density, chromatin content and proliferative activity.

Procedures: Pre-treatment ADC maps of 21 PCNSL patients (8 female, 13 male, 28-89 years) from a 1.5T system were used for Matlab-based histogram profiling. Results of histopathology (H&E staining) and immunohistochemistry (Ki-67 expression) were quantified. Correlations between histogram-profiling parameters and neuropathologic examination were calculated using SPSS 23.0.

Results: The lower percentiles (p10 and p25) showed significant correlations with structural parameters of the neuropathologic examination (cellular density, chromatin content). The highest percentile, p90, correlated significantly with Ki-67 expression, resembling proliferative activity. Kurtosis of the ADC histogram correlated significantly with cellular density.

Conclusions: Histogram-profiling of DWI in PCNSL provides a comprehensible set of parameters, which reflect distinct tumor-architectural and tumor-biological features, and hence, are promising biomarkers for treatment response and prognosis.