Abstract #0819

Crawford F, Khayal I, Saraswathy S, Chang S, Oh J, McKnight T, Cha S, Nelson S, Lamborn K

Gliomas are spatially heterogeneous brain tumors; non-invasive methods for evaluating this heterogeneity are important in directing patient treatment. Previous studies have shown an inverse correlation of ADC to choline for heterogeneous grades and regions; this study suggests there is an inverse correlation specifically in Grade IV patients, but not in Grade II. This implies that there is independent information to be acquired from both diffusion and spectroscopic imaging. Furthermore, the range of values for ADC and choline within a Grade IV tumor are large and require image-guided biopsy to accurately correlate these values to cell density.