“Occult” post-contrast signal enhancement in pediatric diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma is the MRI marker of angiogenesis?

Introduction In diffuse intrinsic pontine gliomas (DIPG), subtracting pre-contrast from post-contrast T1-weighted images (T1WI) occasionally reveals subtle, “occult” enhancement. We hypothesized that this represents intravascular enhancement related to angiogenesis and hence that these tumors should have greater blood volume fractions than do non-enhancing tumors.