MR brain mapping assesses response to glioma therapy

August 1, 2008 Diagnostic Imaging. MR brain mapping assesses response to glioma therapy Functional diffusion technique shortens time needed to determine treatment efficiency, make adjustments -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The first three months after standard radiation therapy for a brain tumor must be hell for patients and their families. The established MacDonald criteria for assessing treatment force them to wait up to 10 weeks for follow-up CT or MR to determine whether the treatment is working. Using the Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors (RECIST), the physician will probably either stick with the treatment plan for patients with responding or stable disease or recommend surgery to remove tumors that do not respond. Between initial treatment and follow-up, patients can do little but imagine the worst and bide their time. The days of this treatment paradigm may be numbered, however, if the work of professor Brian Ross, Ph.D., and colleagues in the radiology department at the University of Michigan gains general support. They propose serial functional MR diffusion mapping performed a week before treatment and then one, three, and 10 weeks after the initiation of radiation therapy to give the oncologist an earlier and ongoing measure of treatment response and assessments of patient survival.

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