Cerebral microbubble distribution correlation between preoperative perfusion MRI and intraoperative contrast enhanced ultrasound
Ultrasound contrast agents (UCAs) allow to assess brain perfusion via contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) imaging and to perform ultrasound-based therapies such as blood brain barrier opening. Currently, the heterogeneous distribution of the UCAs within physiological and pathological structures is neglected to dynamically fine-tune the treatment schemes. Since microbubbles are pure intravascular agents, we hypothesize that their distribution can be correlated with Dynamic-Susceptibility-Contrast (DSC) MRI. Pre-operative DSC-MRI and intra-operative CEUS imaging were performed in 31 patients undergoing elective brain tumor resection. At qualitative comparison, CEUS and DSC-MRI showed superimposable anatomical structures and lesion perfusion features in all cases. Quantitative analysis revealed no correlation between CEUS and DSC for MTT, moderate correlation for TTP, and negative correlation for nAUC with DSC-CBV. Our results indicate that DSC-MRI perfusion patterns demonstrate both qualitative and quantitative correlation with CEUS and can be used as a non-invasive biomarker for MBs’ distribution in the human brain.
Authors
- Stefania Ferraro (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5939-0459)
- Massimiliano Del Bene (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6672-9721)
- Fabio Martino Doniselli (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2272-7855)
- Luca Raspagliesi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6708-7003)
- Giovanni Durando (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6324-0827)
- Francesco DiMeco (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6213-5793)
- Marina Grisoli (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7663-446X)
- Domenico Aquino (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1289-9573)
- Frédéric Padilla (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2452-9497)
- Luca Maria Sconfienza (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0759-8431)
- Riccardo Ciocca
- Francesco Prada (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0653-9317)
Institutions
- Johns Hopkins University (US)
- University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (CN)
- University of Milan (IT)
- Focused Ultrasound Foundation (US)
- Istituto Clinico Sant'Ambrogio (IT)
- Istituto Nazionale di Ricerca Metrologica (IT)
- Neurological Surgery (US)
- Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Neurologico Carlo Besta (IT)
- University of Virginia (US)
- European Institute of Oncology (IT)
Publication Details
- Journal
- npj Acoustics
- Published
- 2025-12-04
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s44384-025-00035-4
- Primary Topic
- Ultrasound and Hyperthermia Applications
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- Focused Ultrasound Foundation
- Ministero della Salute