scholarly journals Is Diffusion Tensor Imaging-Guided Radiotherapy the New State-of-the-Art? A Review of the Current Literature and Technical Insights

2022 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 816
Author(s):  
Jordan Colman ◽  
Laura Mancini ◽  
Spyros Manolopoulos ◽  
Meetakshi Gupta ◽  
Michael Kosmin ◽  
...  

Despite the increasing precision of radiotherapy delivery, it is still frequently associated with neurological complications. This is in part due to damage to eloquent white matter (WM) tracts, which is made more likely by the fact they cannot be visualised on standard structural imaging. WM is additionally more vulnerable than grey matter to radiation damage. Primary brain malignancies also are known to spread along the WM. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) is the only in vivo method of delineating WM tracts. DTI is an imaging technique that models the direction of diffusion and therefore can infer the orientation of WM fibres. This review article evaluates the current evidence for using DTI to guide intracranial radiotherapy and whether it constitutes a new state-of-the-art technique. We provide a basic overview of DTI and its known applications in radiotherapy, which include using tractography to reduce the radiation dose to eloquent WM tracts and using DTI to detect or predict tumoural spread. We evaluate the evidence for DTI-guided radiotherapy in gliomas, metastatic disease, and benign conditions, finding that the strongest evidence is for its use in arteriovenous malformations. However, the evidence is weak in other conditions due to a lack of case-controlled trials.

NeuroImage ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 754-763 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geert De Groof ◽  
Marleen Verhoye ◽  
Vincent Van Meir ◽  
Ilse Tindemans ◽  
Alexander Leemans ◽  
...  

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Don Bigler ◽  
Mark Meadowcroft ◽  
Xiaoyan Sun ◽  
Jeffrey Vesek ◽  
Alex Dresner ◽  
...  

This document describes a suite of new multi-threaded classes for calculating magnetic resonance (MR) T2 and T1 parameter maps implemented using the Insight Toolkit ITK (www.itk.org). Similar to MR diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), MR T2 and T1 parameter maps provide a non-invasive means for quantitatively measuring disease or pathology in-vivo. Included in the suite are classes for reading proprietary Bruker 2dseq and Philips PAR/REC images and example programs and data for validating the new classes.


2006 ◽  
Vol 23 (5) ◽  
pp. 747-751 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francis K.H. Lee ◽  
Ma-Rong Fang ◽  
Gregory E. Antonio ◽  
David K.W. Yeung ◽  
Edward T.Y. Chan ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Rodolfo Gabriel Gatto ◽  
Carina Weissmann

Background:Huntington’s Disease is an irreversible neurodegenerative disease characterized by the progressive deterioration of specific brain nerve cells. The current evaluation of cellular and physiological events in patients with HD relies on the development of transgenic animal models. To explore such events in vivo, diffusion tensor imaging has been developed to examine the early macro and microstructural changes in brain tissue. However, the gap in diffusion tensor imaging findings between animal models and clinical studies and the lack of microstructural confirmation by histological methods has questioned the validity of this method.Objective:This review explores white and grey matter ultrastructural changes associated to diffusion tensor imaging, as well as similarities and differences between preclinical and clinical Huntington’s Disease studies.Methods:A comprehensive review of the literature using online-resources was performed (Pub- Med search).Results:Similar changes in fractional anisotropy as well as axial, radial and mean diffusivities were observed in white matter tracts across clinical and animal studies. However, comparative diffusion alterations in different grey matter structures were inconsistent between clinical and animal studies.Conclusion:Diffusion tensor imaging can be related to specific structural anomalies in specific cellular populations. However, some differences between animal and clinical studies could derive from the contrasting neuroanatomy or connectivity across species. Such differences should be considered before generalizing preclinical results into the clinical practice. Moreover, current limitations of this technique to accurately represent complex multicellular events at the single micro scale are real. Future work applying complex diffusion models should be considered.


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