MR, PET pick best biopsy sites for malignant gliomas

Clinicians can now choose from several MR and PET imaging strategies to identify a brain malignancy's most anaplastic area, according to German researchers.

Dr. Marc-Andre Weber and colleagues from the German Cancer Research Center and nuclear medicine and radiology departments at the University of Heidelberg examined six approaches performed on 23 patients with gliomas. They found that the methods that single out areas of greatest microcirculation (dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI) and cell proliferation (MR spectroscopy or FLT-PET) are the ones best suited for marking the hot spot and enabling optimal grading of malignant gliomas.

The study was presented at the 2007 International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine meeting.