Clinical usefulness of Gd-DTPA for magnetic resonance imaging of cerebrospinal tumor

Gadopentate(Gd-DTPA), recently developed contrast agent for magnetic resonance imaging(MRI), was evaluated for the diagnosis of cerebrospinal tumor with MRI. Twenty one patients with various cerebrospinal tumors were studied. MRI was performed before and after intravenous administration of Gd-DTPA with spin-echo(SE) and inversion recovery(IR) pulse sequences. Gd-DTPA provided marked enhancement for neurinoma and glioblastoma, moderate for meningioma and equivocal for low grade astrocytoma on IR images. Especially, Gd-DTPA had great effect on glioblastoma for separating tumor tissue from surrounding edema and on cystic astrocytoma and neurinoma for delineating cystic and solid portion within tumor. Gd-DTPA seems to be of great use for the diagnosis of cerebrospinal tumor with MRI. (author)