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Updated: May 17, 2026
Magnetic Resonance Elastography Methodology for the Evaluation of Tissue Engineered Construct Growth
Published on: February 9, 2012
Preoperative assessment of meningioma stiffness using magnetic resonance elastography
Matthew C Murphy1, John Huston, Kevin J Glaser
1Department of Radiology, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Rochester, Minnesota 55905, USA.
Object:
The object of this study was to determine the potential of magnetic resonance elastography (MRE) to preoperatively assess the stiffness of meningiomas.
Methods:
Thirteen patients with meningiomas underwent 3D brain MRE examination to measure stiffness in the tumor as well as in surrounding brain tissue. Blinded to the MRE results, neurosurgeons made a qualitative assessment of tumor stiffness at the time of resection. The ability of MRE to predict the surgical assessment of stiffness was tested using a Spearman rank correlation.
Results:
One case was excluded due to a small tumor size. In the remaining 12 cases, both tumor stiffness alone (p = 0.023) and the ratio of tumor stiffness to surrounding brain tissue stiffness (p = 0.0032) significantly correlated with the surgeons' qualitative assessment of tumor stiffness. Results of the MRE examination provided a stronger correlation with the surgical assessment of stiffness compared with traditional T1- and T2-weighted imaging (p = 0.089), particularly when considering meningiomas of intermediate stiffness.
Conclusions:
In this cohort, preoperative MRE predicted tumor consistency at the time of surgery. Tumor stiffness as measured using MRE outperformed conventional MRI because tumor appearance on T1- and T2-weighted images could only accurately predict the softest and hardest meningiomas.
