Quantitatively peritumoral edema in intracranial tumors by using diffusion tensor imaging

Objective To evaluate whether DTI metrics of peritumoral edema,including mean diffusion coefficient(MD) and Fractional anisotropy(FA) can be used to differentiate nature of peritumoral edema.Methods Conventional MRI and diffusion-tensor imaging(DTI) were performed preoperatively in 40 patients with intracranial neoplasms in our hospital.MD and FA values of peritumoral edema area in 3 tumor types were measured;both values were also measured in solid portion and peritumoral edema area of high-grade gliomas.Results Peritumoral MD and FA values indicated no statistically significant difference between high-grade gliomas and metastatic tumors(P0.05),while there was a statistically significant difference between metastatic tumors and meningiomas(P0.05).The measured peritumoral FA of high-grade gliomas was significantly lower than that of meningiomas(P0.01),while the MD value of them showed no significant difference(P0.05).Conclusion Measuring the peritumoral MD and FA and analyzing the characteristics of FA map can be used to differentiate nature of peritumoral edema,and then to fix the exact margin of tumors.