The assessment of immature microvascular density in brain gliomas with dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging

• It is very important to evaluate glioma immature microvessel in a noninvasive manner for clinical practice.
• In this work, we evaluated the immature microvascular density (MVD) in brain gliomas by comparing with dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DCE-MRI) and CD105 positive MVD.
• Our study provided a direct histologic microvascular that correlated with DCE-MRI, which may help to support the alternative hypothesis that DCE-MRI can assess the malignant and immature microvessels within gliomas.
• Specifically, we validated the hypothesis that DCE-MRI could reflect immature MVD within gliomas.

PurposeThis study was designed to quantitatively evaluate the immature microvascular density (MVD) of brain gliomas using the volume transfer constant (Ktrans) and volume of extravascular extracellular space per unit volume of tissue (Ve) from dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DCE-MRI) noninvasively.Materials and methodsFifty-seven patients (35 males, 22 females; age range, 14–70, mean age 46 ± 12 years old) with brain glioma were included in this study. The maximal values of Ktrans and Ve of all patients with brain glioma (grade II 24, III 7 and IV 26) were obtained. The CD105-microvascular density (CD105-MVD) of each tumor was measured in surgical specimen. The differences of Ktrans, Ve and CD105-MVD between the different grades of gliomas were analyzed using the Mann–Whitney U-test. The Pearman correlation coefficient was determined between Ktrans, Ve and CD105-MVD. A P-value of less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant.ResultsThe differences in Ktrans, Ve and CD105-MVD were statistically significant between low-grade glioma (LGG) and high-grade glioma (HGG) (P = 0.001, P < 0.001, P < 0.001). The Ktrans, Ve and CD105-MVD of grade II were significantly lower than those of grade III and IV. Ktrans and Ve were positively correlated with CD105-MVD in HGG (P < 0.001, P < 0.001).ConclusionsOur results suggest DCE-MRI plays an important part in noninvasively evaluating the immature MVD of brain gliomas.