Utility of dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging for differentiating glioblastoma, primary central nervous system lymphoma and brain metastatic tumor.

Abstract Purpose The study aimed to investigate the use of dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-derived permeability parameters for the differentiation of glioblastoma multiformes (GBMs), primary central nervous system lymphomas (PCNSLs), and brain metastatic tumors (MTs). Materials and methods Seventy-five patients with histopathologically confirmed GBMs (n = 38), PCNSLs (n = 16) and MTs (n = 21) underwent dynamic contrast-enhanced MRIs before surgery. The volume transfer constant K trans , the flux rate constant between extravascular extracellular space and plasma K ep , the extravascular extracellular volume V e and the fractional plasma volume V p were measured within the entire contrast-enhancing tumor by extended Tofts model. A one-way analysis of variance was used to compare all of the parameters among these three tumors, followed by the post-hoc test. Receiver operating characteristic curves were constructed to evaluate the diagnostic performance of the permeability parameters. Results Mean K trans value and V e value were significantly higher in PCNSLs than in GBMs ( P P  = 0.011) and MTs ( P P trans and V e had good diagnostic performance for discriminating between PCNSLs and GBMs (the area under the curve: 0.847 and 0.785, respectively), as well as between PCNSLs and MTs (the area under the curve: 0.851 and 0.884, respectively). Conclusions The K trans and V e derived from dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI facilitate the differentiation of PCNSLs from GBMs and MTs.