Analysis of Glioblastoma Multiforme Tumor Metabolites Using Multivoxel Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy

Background: glioblastoma multiforme (gbm) is the most common and deadly typeof primary brain tumor in adults. magnetic resonance spectroscopy (mrs) is a noninvasive imaging technique used to study metabolic changes in the brain tumors. some metabolites such as phosphocholine, creatine, naa/cr, and pcho/cr have been proven to show a diagnostic role in gbm. the present study was conducted to analyze important metabolites using mrs multivoxel in gbm tumor. methods: in this study, information was collected from 8 individuals diagnosed with gbm using siemens multivoxel mrs with a magnetic field strength of 3 t. data were obtained by point-resolved spectroscopy (press) protocol with te=135 ms and tr=1570 ms. naa, pcho, cr, ala, gln, gly, glu, lac, naag, and tau metabolites were extracted and evaluated statistically. results: given total number of normal voxels and total number of all voxels, levels of cr, glu, naa, naag, and gly/tau ratio in healthy voxels were significantly higher than tumoral voxels (p=0.005, p=0.03, p<0.001, p<0.001 and p=0.041, respectively). in contrast, levels of gly, gln, tau, lac/cr, pcho/cr, pcho/naa, lac/naa, and gln/glu ratios in tumoral voxels were significantly more than healthy voxels (p=0.001, p= 0.037, p<0.001, p=0.010, p<0.001, p<0.001, and p=0.024, respectively). however, levels of lac and pcho had no significant difference in the two types of voxels. conclusion: in summary, compared to patients with glioblastoma with ^1h-mrs, the pcho/cr and pcho/naa ratios, and naag are the most important parameters to differentiate between tumoral and normal voxels.