Purpose: To evaluate the feasibility of a 3-minutes protocol for assessment of the microscopic anisotropy and tissue heterogeneity based on tensor-valued diffusion MRI in a wide range of intracranial tumors.
Methods: B-tensor encoding was performed in 42 patients with intracranial tumors (gliomas, meningiomas, adenomas, and metastases). Microscopic anisotropy and tissue heterogeneity were evaluated by estimating the anisotropic kurtosis (MKA ) and isotropic kurtosis (MKI ), respectively. An extensive imaging protocol was compared with a 3-minutes protocol.
Results: The fast imaging protocol yielded parameters with characteristics in terms of bias and precision similar to the full protocol. Glioblastomas had lower microscopic anisotropy than meningiomas (MKA = 0.29 ± 0.06 vs. 0.45 ± 0.08, P = 0.003). Metastases had higher tissue heterogeneity (MKI = 0.57 ± 0.07) than both the glioblastomas (0.44 ± 0.06, P < 0.001) and meningiomas (0.46 ± 0.06, P = 0.03).
Conclusion: Evaluation of the microscopic anisotropy and tissue heterogeneity in intracranial tumor patients is feasible in clinically relevant times frames.
Keywords: diffusion MRI; microscopic anisotropy; tumor heterogeneity.
© 2019 The Authors. Magnetic Resonance in Medicine published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine.