• Andreas D Fotopoulos, George A Alexiou, Ann Goussia, Athanasios Papadopoulos, Athanasios P Kyritsis, Konstantinos S Polyzoidis, Spyridon Voulgaris, and Spyridon Tsiouris.
• Department of Nuclear Medicine, University of Ioannina School of Medicine, P.O. Box 103, Neohoropoulo, Ioannina, 455 00, Greece.
• J. Neurooncol. 2008 Sep 1;89(2):225-30.

AbstractMeningiomas account for about 30% of all intracranial tumors. Evaluation of their proliferation rate is useful for assessing their biological behavior. We evaluated prospectively whether (99m)Tc-Tetrofosmin ((99m)Tc-TF) uptake in meningiomas correlates with cellular proliferative activity and with tumor grade. We prospectively studied 18 meningioma cases. Brain single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) by (99m)Tc-TF was performed within a week prior to surgical excision. In the excised tumor specimens we assessed Ki-67 antigen expression. 14 of 18 patients had benign meningiomas, while the remaining four had anaplastic meningiomas. A significant correlation was found between both (99m)Tc-TF uptake and tumor grade (r = 0.722, P = 0.001) and between (99m)Tc-TF uptake and Ki-67 expression (r = 0.930, P < 0.001). There was a significant correlation between the intensity of tracer uptake and tumor recurrence at 1 year postoperative (r = 0.574, P = 0.02). This pilot study implies that (99m)Tc-TF brain SPECT could prove useful in differentiating benign from anaplastic meningiomas and is a potential indicator of their proliferative activity.

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