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Quantitative Susceptibility Mapping in Skull Base Chordoma: In Silico Analysis and In Vivo Application Towards
P Fenech1, L Morelli1, G Parrella1
1Dipartimento di Elettronica, Informazione e Bioingegneria, Politecnico di Milano, Milano, Italy.
Magnetic Resonance in Medicine
|November 25, 2025
Summary
Quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM) shows promise for identifying hypoxic regions in skull base chordomas (SBC). This non-invasive technique correlates with tumor proliferation, aiding in characterization.
Area of Science:
- Medical Imaging
- Biophysics
- Oncology
Background:
- Quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM) is an advanced MRI technique.
- Its application beyond the brain is less explored.
- Skull base chordomas (SBC) are rare tumors where hypoxia may influence behavior.
Purpose of the Study:
- To validate QSM processing steps using realistic simulations.
- To assess QSM's potential for detecting hypoxia in SBC.
- To correlate QSM features with tumor proliferation.
Main Methods:
- Optimized QSM pipeline including phase unwrapping, background field removal, and dipole inversion.
- Applied QSM to seven SBC patients, analyzing tumor heterogeneity.
- Correlated QSM metrics with Ki-67 proliferation index and developed a binary classifier.
Main Results:
- Optimized QSM pipeline achieved high accuracy.
- Observed significant correlations between QSM features (max value, variation) and Ki-67.
- The developed classifier achieved 85.7% accuracy in distinguishing low- and high-proliferation tumors.
Conclusions:
- QSM can characterize SBC and potentially identify hypoxic regions non-invasively.
- This study lays the groundwork for using QSM in SBC assessment.
- Further validation with hypoxia markers like HIF-1α is recommended.
