Combined MRI and MRS improves pre-therapeutic diagnoses of pediatric brain tumors over MRI alone

The specific goal of this study was to determine whether the inclusion of MRS had a measureable and positive impact on the accuracy of pre-surgical MR examinations of untreated pediatric brain tumors over that of MRI alone in clinical practice.

Final imaging reports of 120 pediatric patients with newly detected brain tumors who underwent combined MRI/MRS examinations were retrospectively reviewed. Final pathology was available in all cases. Group A comprised 60 subjects studied between June 2001 and January 2005, when MRS was considered exploratory and radiologists utilized only conventional MRI to arrive at a diagnosis. For group B, comprising 60 subjects studied between January 2005 and March 2008, the radiologists utilized information from both MRI and MRS. Furthermore, radiologists revisited group A (blind review, time lapse >4 years) to determine whether the additional information from MRS would have altered their interpretation.

Sixty-three percent of patients in group A were diagnosed correctly, whereas in 10% the report was partially correct with the final tumor type mentioned (but not mentioned as most likely tumor), while in 27% of cases the reports were wrong. For group B, the diagnoses were correct in 87%, partially correct in 5%, and incorrect in 8% of the cases, which is a significant improvement (p < 0.005). Re-review of combined MRI and MRS of group A resulted 87% correct, 7% partially correct, and 7% incorrect diagnoses, which is a significant improvement over the original diagnoses (p < 0.05).

Adding MRS to conventional MRI significantly improved diagnostic accuracy in preoperative pediatric patients with untreated brain tumors.