Malignant bone tumor intramedullary invasion: evaluation with dual-energy computed tomography in a rabbit model
Haisong Chen1, Meng Jia, Wenjian Xu
1From the *Department of Radiology, the Affiliated Hospital of Qingdao University; and †Department of Radiology, The Hospital of Women and Children, Qingdao, China.
Purpose:
The aim of this study was to investigate the usefulness of dual-energy computed tomography (CT) spectral imaging for differentiating intramedullary microscopic invasion from simple marrow edema in a rabbit VX2 carcinoma model.
Methods:
VX2 tumors were implanted into the right tibiae of 30 New Zealand white rabbits. After 4 weeks, single-source dual-energy spectral CT was performed, and tumor specimens were cut into sagittal sections and partitioned into pathological slices. Multiplanar reconstruction images corresponding to the sagittal sections were selected for dot-to-dot comparisons to determine the macroscopic tumor, transition, and normal marrow areas. The regions of interest were classified into the above 3 areas according to the pathological maps to construct the CT spectral curves, and the slopes of the curves were calculated.
Results:
The slope of the spectral curve in the transition area (7.78 ± 3.40) was significantly greater than that in the macroscopic tumor area (3.71 ± 2.15) and smaller than that in the normal marrow area (12.88 ± 4.12) (P < 0.001). Regarding the transition area, the slope of the spectral curve of the microscopic tumor invasion zone (10.87 ± 2.69) was greater than that of the simple bone marrow edema zone (5.84 ± 2.11) (P < 0.001).
Conclusions:
The properties of transition areas (microscopic invasion or simple bone marrow) can be determined by comparing spectral curves generated using dual-energy CT.
