A quantitative study of grade of gliomas by applying dynamic contrast-enhanced MR imaging technique

Obtaining MRI parametric maps for addressing pathophysiology features rather than focusing on anatomical structures of tissues is becoming popular in quantitative study of human glioma. In Perfusion MRI, injected contrast agent may leak into the surrounding tissues of a glioma due to the breakdown of blood-brain barrier (BBB) in malignant (i.e., high grade) gliomas. As the consequence, the intensity of T₁-weighted MRI signal increases during the leakage process. Based on the fact, in this paper quantitative indices including microvascular permeability were calculated by us to evaluate the histopathologic grades of gliomas by employing a T₁-weighted dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DCE-MRI) technique with 2D turbo fast low angle shot (turbo-FLASH) sequence. We presented the data analysis model of the DCE data, and the statistical analysis results from Kruskal-Wallis H-test and Mann-Whitney U-test.