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Abstract #3163

Is Quantitative T2 Sensitive to Tumor Cell Infiltration?

Tonima Sumya Ali1, Thorarin Bjarnason1, Beichen Sun1, Xueqing Lun1, Donna Senger1,2, Peter Forsyth1,3, Jeff Dunn1,4, Joseph Ross Mitchell1,3

1University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada; 2Tom Baker Cancer Centre; 3Southern Alberta Cancer Research Institute; 4Hotchkiss Brain Institute


Quantitative analysis of multi-echo T2 relaxation has been used to examine micro compartmental structures in rat glioblastoma tumors. The infiltrative nature of malignant gliomas poses a major clinical challenge in rendering tumors incurable by conventional techniques. Recently, brain tumor initiating cells (BTIC) have been hypothesized to represent the cell of origin for these tumors. We analyzed 5 mouse brains in vivo inoculated with BTIC to characterize the changes in T2 distributions for each heterogeneous tumor. Based on the qualitative comparison between segmented geometric mean T2 map and histology staining, 4 regions were identified that corresponded to varying tumor cell densities.

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