Chemical Exchange Saturation Transfer Imaging in Human Glioma at 7T

Motivation: For glioma patients undergoing treatment, the current criteria for evaluating treatment response only use anatomical MRI images, providing insufficient information for challenging cases like pseudo-progression and pseudo-response. Goal(s): Chemical Exchange Saturation Transfer (CEST) imaging of the tumor region can provide metabolic information for prognosis and treatment response evaluation. Approach: High-resolution CEST acquisition at 7T is implemented in the multi-modal brain cancer trial for baseline and after-treatment scans. Results: CEST scan of the glioma region provides crucial metabolic information that cannot be retrieved from anatomical images alone. Impact: In combination with the clinical anatomical images, acquiring CEST data for glioma patients at 7T is beneficial for the monitoring of tumor progression and the evaluation of treatment response.