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The Role of Arterial Spin Labelling (ASL) in Classification of Primary Adult Gliomas

Alsaedi, Amirah Faisal S.; (2021) The Role of Arterial Spin Labelling (ASL) in Classification of Primary Adult Gliomas. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London). Green open access

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Abstract

Currently, the histological biopsy is the gold standard for classifying gliomas using the most recent histomolecular features. However, this process is both invasive and challenging, mainly when the lesion is in eloquent brain regions. Considering the complex interaction between the presence of the isocitrate dehydrogenase (IDH)-mutation, the upregulation of the hypoxia-induced factor (HIF), the neo-angiogenesis and the increased cellularity, perfusion MRI may be used indirectly for gliomas staging and further to predict the presence of key mutations, such as IDH. Recently, several studies have reported the subsidiary role of perfusion MRI in the prediction of gliomas histomolecular class. The three most common perfusion MRI methods are dynamic susceptibility contrast (DSC), dynamic contrast enhancement (DCE) and arterial spin labelling (ASL). Both DSC and DCE use exogenous contrast agent (CA) while ASL uses magnetically labelled blood water as an inherently diffusible tracer. ASL has begun to feature more prominently in clinical settings, as this method eliminates the need for CA and facilitates quantification of absolute cerebral blood flow (CBF). As a non-invasive, CA-free test, it can also be performed repeatedly where necessary. This makes it ideal for vulnerable patients, e.g. post-treatment oncological patients, who have reduced tolerance for high rate contrast injections and those suffering from renal insufficiency. This thesis performed a systematic review and critical appraisal of the existing ASL techniques for brain perfusion estimation, followed by a further systematic review and meta-analysis of the published studies, which have quantitatively assessed the diagnostic performance of ASL for grading preoperative adult gliomas. The repeatability of absolute tumour blood flow (aTBF) and relative TBF (rTBF) ASL-derived measurements were estimated to investigate the reliability of these ASL biomarkers in the clinical routine. Finally, utilising the radiomics pipeline analysis, the added diagnostic performance of ASL compared with CA-based MRI perfusion techniques, including DSC and DCE, and diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) was investigated for glioma class prediction according to the WHO-2016 classification.

Type: Thesis (Doctoral)
Qualification: Ph.D
Title: The Role of Arterial Spin Labelling (ASL) in Classification of Primary Adult Gliomas
Event: UCL (University College London)
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
Language: English
Additional information: Copyright © The Author 2021. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request.
Keywords: Gliomas, Radiomics, Magnetic resonance imaging, Advanced MRI, Perfusion MRI, Diffusion MRI
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10133252
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