• T Sugahara, Y Korogi, M Kochi, Y Ushio, and M Takahashi.
• Department of Radiology, Kumamoto University School of Medicine, 1-1-1 Honjo, Kumamoto 860-8556, Japan.
• AJNR Am J Neuroradiol. 2001 Aug 1; 22 (7): 1306-15.

Background And PurposeThe different sensitivities to vessel size of gradient-echo echo-planar imaging (GE-EPI) and spin-echo EPI (SE-EPI) might indicate the relative cerebral blood volumes (rCBVs) of different tumor sizes. The techniques of GE-EPI and SE-EPI were compared for detecting low- versus high-grade gliomas.MethodsSix patients with low-grade gliomas and 19 patients with high-grade gliomas underwent two perfusion-sensitive MR procedures, one produced by a GE- and the other by an SE-EPI technique. Maximum rCBV ratios normalized with rCBV of contralateral white matter were calculated for evaluation. P <.05 was considered statistically significant.ResultsMaximum rCBV ratios of high-grade gliomas obtained with the GE-EPI technique (mean, 5.0 +/- 2.9) were significantly higher than those obtained with the SE-EPI technique (mean, 2.9 +/- 2.3) (P =.02). Maximum rCBV ratios of low-grade gliomas obtained with the GE-EPI technique (mean, 1.2 +/- 0.7) were almost equal to those obtained with the SE-EPI technique (mean, 1.2 +/- 0.6), and there was no significant difference (P =.66). The difference in the maximum rCBV ratios between the low- and high-grade gliomas reached significance when obtained with the GE-EPI technique (P =.01).ConclusionThe GE-EPI technique seems more useful for detecting low- versus high-grade gliomas than the SE-EPI technique.

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