Magnetic resonance imaging (mri)‎ patterns of intracranial meningiomas

Abstract EN

Subtyping of Meningioma into benign, atypical and malignant entities is of supreme importance in respect to treatment options of surgery, radiation therapy, or a combination of the two, in addition to that, embolization procedure for the feeding arteries is a successful consideration in most of the highly vascular or potentially more malignant meningioma to evaluate the role of MRI in defining the characteristic pattern of intracranial meningioma and to correlate MRI with the histopathological findings in an attempt to predict the histological diagnosis (subtype) prior to surgery.

A cross-sectional analytic study was performed on Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) of surgically and biopsy verified intracranial meningioma in 62 patients (21 males and 41 females) in an attempt to predict the histological features.

The study was done in Al-Jirahat Specialized Surgical Hospital and in Al-Sadri teaching Hospital, department of radiology beside Alameer MR private center in Alnajaf Al Ashraf city during a period between October 2002 and September 2005.

On MRI appearance, atypical and malignant meningioma in contrast with the more benign histology had more heterogeneous signal intensity and enhancement in (80%) and (100%) respectively, less obviously showed meningioma cleft sign, more cystic appearance in (60%) and (100%) respectively, surrounded by marked edema (+++) degree, exert more mass effect and invade the dural venous sinus in almost all the cases.

Overall, MRI is an excellent non-invasive tool for the preoperative evaluation of intracranial meningioma and can predict with a good degree of certainty the aggressive behavior of the more atypical and malignant meningioma.

This study showed lower rate of atypical and malignant meningioma than other similar studies.

Other findings are similar to what have been found in other studies performed on intracranial meningioma.