Imaging of brain tumours with special emphasis on metastatic disease

Summary

Advances in MR imaging techniques have made considerable progress in recent years. Both high resolution anatomical imaging and functional parameters when using higher advanced MR techniques have become a valuable adjunct to conventional imaging, helping to further differentiate a lesion or to better determine an adequate therapy or biopsy site. Diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) are available on virtually every MR scanner, although especially for DTI the post processing is somewhat more demanding. The use of MR perfusion and MR spectroscopy (MRS) has become more and more routine. BOLD imaging (fMRI) is able to correlate brain activation with specific tasks (paradigms), which have also added information for presurgical evaluation of brain metastases or brain tumour in general.