Reliability of MR Spectroscopy and PET CT in Differentiating Metastatic Brain Tumor Recurrence from Radiation Necrosis.

Abstract

BACKGROUND\nClinical and/or neuro-imaging changes after whole brain radiation therapy (WBRT) or stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) for metastatic brain tumor(s) present the clinical dilemma of differentiating tumor recurrence from radiation necrosis. A number of imaging modalities attempt to answer this clinical question including magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) and positron emission tomography (PET) CT. We evaluated our experience regarding the ability of MRS and PET CT to differentiate tumor recurrence from radiation necrosis in patients who have received WBRT or SRS.\n\n\nMETHODS\nWe retrospectively reviewed records of 242 patients with previous WBRT or SRS to identify those who had MRS and/or PET CT to differentiate tumor recurrence from radiation necrosis. Patients were sorted into true positive, false positive, false negative, and true negative groups on the basis of imaging interpretation and clinical course combined with surgical pathology results or reaction to non-surgical treatments including SRS, dexamethasone, or observation. Sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value, and accuracy were then calculated.\n\n\nRESULTS\nOf 25 patients presenting such diagnostic questions, 19 patients were evaluated with MRS and 13 patients with PET CT. MRS sensitivity was 100%, specificity was 50%, and accuracy was 81.8%, while PET CT sensitivity was 36.4%, specificity was 66.7%, and accuracy was 42.9%.\n\n\nCONCLUSION\nMRS has better accuracy than PET CT and a high negative predictive value, therefore making it more useful in distinguishing recurrent tumor from radiation necrosis. We encourage correlation with symptoms at imaging to aid in clinical decision making.