Imaging diagnosis of atypical schwannoma

YU Wan-jiang; SUN Qi-qin; XU Hai-bin; LIU Jian; ZHOU Wei

Abstract：Objective To explore clinical imaging characters of atypical schwannoma .Methods CT and MR imagings of 44 cases of atypical schwannoma confirmed pathologically were retrospectively analysed .The lesions’ site of the 44 cases distributed in head and neck in 18 ,thoracic in 10 ,abdomen in 10 ,and other parts in 6 .40 cases were performed plain CT scan and 24 out of those were performed enhanced scan .10 cases were performed plain MR scan and 6 enhanced scan .Re-sults CT demonstrated that lesions were round or lobular mass with low or low-isodensity .Most of the lesions (38/40) had distinct boundary .There were 17 solid lesions ,19 cystic-solid lesions and 4 cystic lesions .Parenchyma of the lesions presented gradual enhancement after contrast and varying degree of the enhanced nodes within a cystic lesion was charac-teristic for schwannoma .Concentric circle like enhancement of solid lesions was a valuable sign of schwannoma .On MRI , the Parenchyma of schwannoma appeared slight long T1 and slight long T2 signal ,the cystic parts of the lesions showed long T1 and long T2 signal .Edema could be found around the lesions and‘target sign’ was specific for diagnosis on MRI . Conclusion Atypical schwannoma can be found in any site of the body .Being familiar with the imaging characters is help-ful for diagnosis .