Differential diagnosis of central lymphoma and high-grade glioma: dynamic contrast-enhanced histogram

Abstract

Background In clinical diagnosis, some central nervous system lymphomas (CNSL) are difficult to distinguish from high-grade gliomas (HGG). Purpose To evaluate the diagnostic efficacy of the histogram analysis of dynamic contrast-enhanced (DCE) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in the identification of CNSL and HGG. Material and Methods In all, 43 patients diagnosed with HGG (n = 28) and CNSL (n = 15) by histopathology underwent DCE-MRI scanning. Differences in histogram parameters based on DCE-MRI between HGG and CNSL were analyzed by Mann–Whitney U test. In addition, receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis was performed. Short-term follow-up of patients was performed using Kaplan–Meier analysis to explore the survival rates of HGG and CNSL. Results For the ROC curve analysis, we demonstrate that the 10th percentile of Ktrans (area under the curve [AUC] = 0.912, sensitivity = 86.7%, specificity = 92.9%), Kep (AUC = 0.940, sensitivity = 93.3%, specificity = 79.6%), Ve (AUC = 0.907, sensitivity = 86.7%, specificity = 89.3%), and AUC (AUC = 0.904, sensitivity = 86.7%, specificity = 92.9%) were significantly different between the CNSL and HGG groups ( P < 0.001), with high diagnostic efficiency. Table 2 shows that the histogram features based on AUC maps (10th, 25th, median, 75th, 90th, and mean) were always significantly higher in the CNSL group than in the HGG group ( P < 0.001). There was no significant difference in Vp or in the 75th, 90th and mean of Ktrans, Kep, and Ve between the CNSL and HGG groups ( P > 0.05). Conclusion A histogram analysis of DCE-MRI identified significant differences between HGG and CNSL, and this will help in the clinical differential diagnosis of these conditions.