Abstract
Current clinical MRI techniques in rectal cancer have limited ability to examine cancer stroma. The differentiation of tumour from desmoplasia or fibrous tissue remains a challenge. Standard MRI cannot differentiate stage T1 from T2 (invasion of muscularis propria) tumours. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) can probe tissue structure and organisation (anisotropy). The purpose of this study was to examine DTI-MRI derived imaging markers of rectal cancer stromal heterogeneity and tumour extent ex vivo. DTI-MRI at ultra-high magnetic field (11.7 tesla) was used to examine the stromal microstructure of malignant and normal rectal tissue ex vivo, and the findings were correlated with histopathology. Images obtained from DTI-MRI (A0, apparent diffusion coefficient and fractional anisotropy (FA)) were used to probe rectal cancer stromal heterogeneity. FA provided the best discrimination between cancer and desmoplasia, fibrous tissue and muscularis propria. Cancer had relatively isotropic diffusion (mean FA 0.14), whereas desmoplasia (FA 0.31) and fibrous tissue (FA 0.34) had anisotropic diffusion with significantly higher FA than cancer (p < 0.001). Tumour was distinguished from muscularis propria (FA 0.61) which was highly anisotropic with higher FA than cancer (p < 0.001). This study showed that DTI-MRI can assist in more accurately defining tumour extent in rectal cancer.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 9311 |
| Number of pages | 12 |
| Journal | Scientific Reports |
| Volume | 9 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2019 |
Open Access - Access Right Statement
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.Keywords
- cancer
- magnetic resonance imaging
- rectum
- tumors
