MR Imaging-derived Oxygen Metabolism and Neovascularization Characterization for Grading and IDH Gene Mutation Detection of Gliomas

Purpose To explore the diagnostic performance of physiological magnetic resonance (MR) imaging of oxygen metabolism and neovascularization activity for grading and characterization of isocitrate dehydrogenase (IDH) gene mutation status of gliomas. Materials and Methods This retrospective study had institutional review board approval; written informed consent was obtained from all patients. Eighty-three patients with histopathologically proven glioma (World Health Organization [WHO] grade II-IV) were examined with quantitative blood oxygen level-dependent imaging and vascular architecture mapping. Biomarker maps of neovascularization activity (microvessel radius, microvessel density, and microvessel type indicator [MTI]) and oxygen metabolism (oxygen extraction fraction [OEF] and cerebral metabolic rate of oxygen [CMRO2]) were calculated. Receiver operating characteristic analysis was used to determine diagnostic performance for grading and detection of IDH gene mutation status. Results Low-grade (WHO grade II) glioma showed areas with increased OEF (+18%, P < .001, n = 20), whereas anaplastic glioma (WHO grade III) and glioblastoma (WHO grade IV) showed decreased OEF when compared with normal brain tissue (-54% [P < .001, n = 21] and -49% [P < .001, n = 41], respectively). This allowed clear differentiation between low- and high-grade glioma (area under the receiver operating characteristic curve [AUC], 1) for the patient cohort. MTI had the highest diagnostic performance (AUC, 0.782) for differentiation between gliomas of grades III and IV among all biomarkers. CMRO2 was decreased (P = .037) in low-grade glioma with a mutated IDH gene, and MTI was significantly increased in glioma grade III with IDH mutation (P = .013) when compared with the IDH wild-type counterparts. CMRO2 showed the highest diagnostic performance for IDH gene mutation detection in low-grade glioma (AUC, 0.818) and MTI in high-grade glioma (AUC, 0.854) and for all WHO grades (AUC, 0.899) among all biomarkers. Conclusion MR imaging-derived oxygen metabolism and neovascularization characterization may be useful for grading and IDH mutation detection of gliomas and requires only 7 minutes of extra imaging time. © RSNA, 2016 Online supplemental material is available for this article.