Scientific Reports (Nov 2022)

Correlation of T1- to T2-weighted signal intensity ratio with T1- and T2-relaxation time and IDH mutation status in glioma

  • Takahiro Sanada,
  • Shota Yamamoto,
  • Mio Sakai,
  • Toru Umehara,
  • Hirotaka Sato,
  • Masato Saito,
  • Nobuyuki Mitsui,
  • Satoru Hiroshima,
  • Ryogo Anei,
  • Yonehiro Kanemura,
  • Mishie Tanino,
  • Katsuyuki Nakanishi,
  • Haruhiko Kishima,
  • Manabu Kinoshita

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-23527-9
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 12, no. 1
pp. 1 – 9

Abstract

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Abstract The current study aimed to test whether the ratio of T1-weighted to T2-weighted signal intensity (T1W/T2W ratio: rT1/T2) derived from conventional MRI could act as a surrogate relaxation time predictive of IDH mutation status in histologically lower-grade gliomas. Strong exponential correlations were found between rT1/T2 and each of T1- and T2-relaxation times in eight subjects (rT1/T2 = 1.63exp−0.0005T1-relax + 0.30 and rT1/T2 = 1.27exp−0.0081T2-relax + 0.48; R2 = 0.64 and 0.59, respectively). In a test cohort of 25 patients, mean rT1/T2 (mrT1/T2) was significantly higher in IDHwt tumors than in IDHmt tumors (p < 0.05) and the optimal cut-off of mrT1/T2 for discriminating IDHmt was 0.666–0.677, (AUC = 0.75, p < 0.05), which was validated in an external domestic cohort of 29 patients (AUC = 0.75, p = 0.02). However, this result was not validated in an external international cohort derived from TCIA/TCGA (AUC = 0.63, p = 0.08). The t-Distributed Stochastic Neighbor Embedding analysis revealed a greater diversity in image characteristics within the TCIA/TCGA cohort than in the two domestic cohorts. The failure of external validation in the TCIA/TCGA cohort could be attributed to its wider variety of original imaging characteristics.