Clinical Research Directory

Diffusion-weighted MRI to Predict Treatment Response in Stereotactic Radiotherapy of Central Nervous System (CNS) Metastases

Stereotactic radiation therapy is an important and common method of treating brain metastases in patients with malignant disease. Today, however, there are no methods available to determine the metastasis' radiation sensitivity in advance and treatment responses can only be seen by changing of the size of the metastasis on conventional X-ray examinations, computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Changes in the size of the metastases is something that is often seen weeks / months after treatment is completed. At Lund University Hospital, a new imaging technique, diffusional variance decomposition (DIVIDE), has now been developed. With this technique, the scatter in isotropic and anisotropic diffusion can be measured for each measuring point, which provides significantly more information about the properties of the tissue compared to current methods.

Contribution of the CEST Sequence in the Characterization of Radionecrosis of Brain Metastases of Pulmonary Origin

The aim of the study is to determine whether the use of the CEST sequence would have diagnostic performance equivalent to the reference method of T2\* infusion with contrast injection in the diagnosis of radionecrosis of lung cancer brain metastases.

FLT-PET / MRI Brain Mets

Brain metastasis (BrM) develops in approximately 40% of cancer patients. Stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) is a form of radiotherapy that delivers high-dose per fraction to individual lesions that is commonly used to treat BrM. Radionecrosis (RN) is an adverse event that occurs in approximately 10 - 25% of patients 6 - 24 months after treatment with SRS. Tumour progression may also occur due to local failure of treatment. Radionecrosis and tumour progression share very similar clinical features including vomiting, nausea, and focal neurologic findings. Radionecrosis and tumour progression also share overlapping imaging characteristics. Due to their similarities, physicians need to perform a surgical resection to diagnose the complication. By using a hybrid FLT-PET/MRI scan, the investigators propose that this combination scan will provide robust data with which to differentiate between radionecrosis and tumour progression without the need for surgery. The investigators plan to conduct a single center feasibility study to investigate the potential in differentiating between SRS and tumour progression in patients, including those who may have previously undergone SRS for BrM, who are suspected to have either RN or tumour progression using hybrid FLT-PET/MRI imaging.