Invited Speaker

Early Tumor Growth Affects Diagnosis and Efficacy of Molecular MRI
B. Tomanek, B. Blasiak, T. Foniok, D. Rushforth, A. Abulrob, U. Iqbal, H. Albanghdadi, D. Stanimirovic, D. Ponjevic, J. Matyas, G. Sutherland
Canada

Despite considerable efforts mean survival for gliomas remains less than one year. MRI and, most recently, molecular MRI have been used for glioma diagnosis with a disputable outcome. Although the early diagnosis is crucial for successful treatment, the changes in T2 relaxation time at the early stage of the tumor development, that impact MR image contrast, remain poorly studied. Therefore, we investigated the correlation between T2 and the growth of glioma cells using an animal model at 9.4T.

The results showed a linear increase of the tumor volume from 2 to 4mm3 on days 10 to 13 after inoculation respectively. The tumor's T2 also gradually increased (by about 10%) and correlated with the tumor volume.

The observations indicate that that application of molecular MRI for early diagnosis and monitoring of a drug delivery, that applies targeted contrast agents shortening T2, may have different efficacy at the early stage of the tumor development. Furthermore the detection of a small tumor with MRI, at its early stage of the growth is problematic due to the both small size of the tumor as well as small difference in T2 between normal tissue and glioma cells causing low contrast to noise ratio.