An exploration of peritumoral glutamate and glutamine in diffuse gliomas using 7T MRSI

Research indicates that glutamate (Glu) and glutamine (Gln) play a role in the infiltrative properties of diffuse gliomas. Overcoming limitations of previous MRSI techniques, our 7T MRSI approach allows high-resolution Glu imaging. We investigated intra- and peritumoral Glu and Gln in a cohort of 36 patients and found significant increases in peritumoral Glu/tNAA, Gln/tNAA, Glu/tCr, and Gln/tCr compared to a NAWM control region. We established peritumoral Dice similarity coefficients of 0.67 for Glu/tNAA and Gln/tNAA compared to 0.31 for tCho/tNAA. Our results that Glu/Gln imaging could investigate the metabolism of infiltrative gliomas.