Landi A, Palmarini V, D’Elia A, Marotta N, Salvati M, Santoro A, Delfini R. Magnetic resonance diffusion tensor imaging and fiber-tracking diffusion tensor tractography in the management of spinal astrocytomas. World J Clin Cases 2016; 4(1): 1-4 [PMID: 26798625 DOI: 10.12998/wjcc.v4.i1.1]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Alessandro Landi, MD, PhD, Department of Neurology and Psychiatry, Division of Neurosurgery, University of Rome “Sapienza”, Viale del Policlinico 155, 00181 Rome, Italy. dott.alessandro.landi@gmail.com
Research Domain of This Article
Neurosciences
Article-Type of This Article
Editorial
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Alessandro Landi, Valeria Palmarini, Alessandro D’Elia, Nicola Marotta, Maurizio Salvati, Antonio Santoro, Roberto Delfini, Department of Neurology and Psychiatry, Division of Neurosurgery, University of Rome “Sapienza”, 00181 Rome, Italy
Author contributions: Landi A and Palmarini V designed work and wrote the manuscript; D’Elia A, Marotta N researched the bibliography; Salvati M, Santoro A and Delfini R have supervised and corrected the manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The author has no conflict of interests.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Alessandro Landi, MD, PhD, Department of Neurology and Psychiatry, Division of Neurosurgery, University of Rome “Sapienza”, Viale del Policlinico 155, 00181 Rome, Italy. dott.alessandro.landi@gmail.com
Telephone: +39-064-9979105 Fax: +39-064-9979105
Received: April 17, 2015 Peer-review started: April 18, 2015 First decision: July 6, 2015 Revised: October 14, 2015 Accepted: December 1, 2015 Article in press: December 2, 2015 Published online: January 16, 2016 Processing time: 271 Days and 21.2 Hours
Abstract
Some specially imaging of magnetic resonance imaging, the diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI), the diffusion tensor imaging and fractional anisotropy (FA), are useful to described, detect, and map the extent of spinal cord lesions. FA measurements may are used to predicting the outcome of patients who have spinal cord lesions. Fiber tracking enable to visualizing the integrity of white matter tracts surrounding some lesions, and this information could be used to formulating a differential diagnosis and planning biopsies or resection. In this article, we will describe the current uses for DWI and fiber tracking and speculate on others in which we believe these techniques will be useful in the future.
Core tip: Intramedullary high grade astocytomas are rare tumors of spinal cord. Current surgical treatment involves loss of neurological function. The possibility to visualize directly the white matter tracts in the spine, with the applications of specific sequences of magnetic resonance imaging (diffusion-weighted imaging, diffusion tensor imaging and fractional anisotropy) allows neurosurgeons to better guide the surgical approach and resection, with the goal of neurological function preservation.
