[Aggressive abdominal fibromatosis: the place of diagnostic imaging]

Aggressive fibromatoses are locally invasive, non-metastasising, fibroblastic soft-tissue tumours. On the basis of examinations made in 6 patients with histologically confirmed diagnosis, the reliability of different imaging modalities in preoperative diagnosis and in follow-up is discussed. The inhomogeneous tumour composition was evident in all imaging procedures. Computed tomography offered the highest sensitivity for tumour detection and proved accurate in demonstrating the characteristic radial tumour spreading of mesenteric aggressive fibromatosis; the attenuation values ranged from 18 to 58 HU. in pre-contrast CT scans. In magnetic resonance imaging the tumours mostly produced a low signal in T1- and T2-weighted sequences; the calculated T2-relaxation times ranged from 97 to 186 ms.