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T1rho imaging of murine brain tumors at 4 T
H Poptani1, U Duvvuri, C G Miller
1Department of Radiology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA.
Rationale And Objectives:
The goal of this study was to evaluate the utility of T1rho weighting in magnetic resonance imaging of murine brain tumors.
Materials And Methods:
S91 Cloudman melanoma was implanted in mouse brains (n = 4). A T2-weighted spin-echo (SE) and a T1rho-weighted fast SE-based sequence were performed on a 4-T clinical imager. T2 and T1rho maps were computed. The tumor-to-normal-tissue contrast was compared between T2-weighted, T1rho-weighted, proton-density-weighted, and pre- and postcontrast T1-weighted SE images.
Results:
The tumor-tissue contrast of the T1rho-weighted images was similar to that of the T2-weighted images but less than that of the postcontrast T1-weighted images. The T1rho-weighted images provided better definition of tumor boundaries than T2-weighted images. At spin-locking powers of 0.5 and 1.5 kHz, the T1rho of the tumor was 64.0 msec +/- 0.46 and 68.65 msec +/- 0.59, respectively. There was no significant inter- or intra-animal variation in T1rho for tumor or normal brain cortex.
Conclusion:
T1rho-weighted imaging performed at low spin-lock strengths qualitatively depicted tumor borders better than proton-density or T2-weighted imaging and could be useful in treatment planning when combined with other imaging sequences.
