In vivo proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy of intraventricular tumours of the brain

The aim of this study was to assess the usefulness of proton MR spectroscopy in the diagnosis of intraventricular tumours. Fifty-two intraventricular tumours pertaining to 16 different tumour types were derived from our database. All cases had single-voxel proton MR spectroscopy performed at TE at both 30 and 136 ms at 1.5 T. The Mann-Whitney U test was used to search for the most discriminative datapoints each tumour type. Characteristic trends were found for some groups: high Glx and Ala in meningiomas (p < 0.001 and p < 0.01, respectively), high mobile lipids in metastasis (p < 0.001), high Cho in PNET (p < 0.001), high mI + Gly in ependymoma (p < 0.001), high NAC (p < 0.01) in the absence of the normal brain parenchyma pattern in colloid cysts, and high mI/Gly and Ala in central neurocytoma. Proton MR spectroscopy provides additional metabolic information that could be useful in the diagnosis of intraventricular brain tumors.