DTI fiber-tracking parameters adjacent to gliomas: the role of tract irregularity value in operative planning, resection, and outcome

Abstract Purpose The goal of glioma surgery is maximal tumor resection associated with minimal post-operative morbidity. Diffusion tensor imaging-tractography/fiber tracking (DTI-FT) is a valuable white-matter (WM) visualization tool for diagnosis and surgical planning. Still, it assumes a descriptive role since the main DTI metrics and parameters showed several limitations in clinical use. New applications and quantitative measurements were recently applied to describe WM architecture that surround the tumor area. The brain adjacent tumor area (BAT) is defined as the region adjacent to the gross tumor volume, which contains signal abnormalities on T2-weighted or FLAIR sequences. The DTI-FT analysis of the BAT can be adopted as predictive values and a guide for safe tumor resection. Methods This is an observational prospective study on an extensive series of glioma patients who performed magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with pre-operative DTI-FT analyzed on the BAT by two different software. We examined DTI parameters of Fractional anisotropy (FA mean, min-max), Mean diffusivity (MD), and the shape-metric “tract irregularity” (TI) grade, comparing it with the surgical series’ clinical, radiological, and outcome data. Results The population consisted of 118 patients, with a mean age of 60.6 years. 82 patients suffering from high-grade gliomas (69.5%), and 36 from low-grade gliomas (30.5%). A significant inverse relationship exists between the FA mean value and grading ( p = 0.001). The relationship appears directly proportional regarding MD values ( p = 0.003) and TI values ( p = 0.005). FA mean and MD values are susceptible to significant variations with tumor and edema volume ( p = 0.05). TI showed an independent relationship with grading regardless of tumor radiological features and dimensions, with a direct relationship with grading, ki67% ( p = 0,05), PFS ( p < 0.001), and EOR ( p < 0.01). Conclusion FA, MD, and TI are useful predictive measures of the clinical behavior of glioma, and TI could be helpful for tumor grading identification and surgical planning.