Evaluation of skin tumors by magnetic resonance imaging

In vivo magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a powerful noninvasive technique in medical diagnosis; however, its application to analyze skin disorders is still at initial stages. To check whether MRI can be used as a noninvasive tool to analyze skin tumors, we carried out MRI of mice after treatment with benzo[a]pyrene (BP), a well known carcinogen. MRI was done on whole mice and was particularly focused on various layers and regions of interest of the skin: dermis, epidermis, and tumor. Initial MRIs of mice bearing skin tumors of 4, 8, 12, and 16 weeks after inducing BP clearly revealed the appearance of tumor. The MRIs of tumor-bearing mice with 20-week-old tumor development showed invasion to adjacent internal anatomic structures. The MRI data were in good agreement with the extent of cellular atypia and neoplastic changes that are typical of squamous cell carcinoma as noticed from the histopathologic findings. Therefore, MRI seems to have the potential to evaluate the tumor invasions equally well as that of histopathology or other clinical findings.