Original Article Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy and its Usefulness in Brain Tumors

Objective: To evaluate the utility of magnetic resonance spectroscopy in cerebellopontine angle tumors taking biopsy as gold standard. Study design: Cross sectional comparative study. Place and Duration: Department of Radio-Diagnosis and Imaging Lahore General Hospital Lahore, a period of six months from September 2007 to March 2008. Materials and Methods: Magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) is a non-invasive method, which provides insight of tumour metabolism. MRS studies were performed on 1.5 Tesla whole body MR systems using standard imaging head coil. Total 50 patients from indoor, outdoor, with suspected cerebellopontine angle(CPA) tumors based on history, clinical and pathological findings were included in this study. Patients having strong contra indication to MRI including those with cardiac pace makers, prosthetic heart valves, cochlear implants, brain aneurysm clips or coils were excluded. Patients already diagnosed, operated, or on treatment for Recurrent tumors, Metastatic tumors or with jerky movements were also excluded. Results: Out of 50 patients 28 (56.0%) were male, 22 (44.0%) were females with mean age of 37.10 ± 15.07. MRS detected 43 out of 50 CPA tumors The Sensitivity, specificity rate and diagnostic accuracy of MR Spectroscopy were 95.4%, 83.3 % and 94.0 % respectively. Conclusion: MR Spectroscopy is useful to arrive at a more definitive diagnosis in cerebellopontine angle tumors with similar morphological imaging patterns