Motivation: Post-treatment glioblastoma lesions often present with both local tumor recurrence and radiation necrosis. Segmenting within-lesion heterogeneity is clinically challenging. Cerebral blood volume (CBV) maps can inform high-risk areas, but with limited specificity. Goal(s): We aim to extend the use of MR Fingerprinting (MRF) from whole-lesion classification to better characterize within-lesion heterogeneity and local recurrence, with histopathological validation. Approach: We propose 1) a retrospective cohort (n=97) that develops MRF-CBV TR signatures from CBV-defined high-risk regions, and 2)a prospective validation cohort (n=14) that correlates the developed metrics with multi-location histopathological samples within lesion, and compares performance of CBV-defined versus biopsy-defined MRF signatures. Impact: The MRF/CBV-informed local tumor recurrance signatures can improve characterization of intratumoral heterogeneity beyond CBV in recurrent glioblastomas. This pipeline will lead to more precise tumor sampling and better treatment response evaluation.
Deng et al. (Tue,) studied this question.