Semi‐solid MT and APTw CEST‐MRI predict clinical outcome of patients with glioma early after radiotherapy

PURPOSE: MT) CEST contrasts of the amide proton transfer (APT) and semi-solid magnetization transfer (ssMT) for early response assessment and prediction of progression-free survival (PFS) in patients with glioma. METHODS: images. Therapy response assessment and determination of PFS were performed according to response assessment in neuro oncology (RANO) criteria using clinical follow-up data with a median observation time of 9.2 mo (range, 1.6-40.8) and compared to CEST MRI metrics. Statistical testing included receiver operating characteristic analyses, Mann-Whitney-U-test, Kaplan-Meier analyses, and logrank-test. RESULTS: APT was not associated with any outcome. CONCLUSION: enables differentiation of radiation-induced pseudoprogression from disease progression. Therefore, the assessed metrics may have synergistic potential for supporting clinical decision making during follow-up of patients with glioma.