The diagnostic value of CT and MRI in supratentorial intra-cerebral parenchymal ependymoma

LIANG Juxiang; DENG Xinyuan; LUO Zhicheng

Abstract：Objective To analyse the imaging features of CT and MRI in supratentorial intra-cerebral parenchymal ependy-moma and improving our diagnostic accuracy.Methods We retrospectively analysed of the imaging features of 16 cases with pathologically diagnosed as supratentorial cerebral parenchymal ependymoma from January 2005 to January 2014.Among those pa-tients, 12 patients had CT and MR scans, three with CT scans and one patient only had MR scan.Results Only two tumors manifested as solid mass while the rest of the tumors ( n=14) manifested as cystic and solid mass.According to the volume of the biggest cyst in the tumor, six (6/14) cases were included in big cyst group.One of six cases had single big cyst and five cases had small cysts around the biggest cyst in tumor, and, on CT and MRI, the biggest cyst usually located in deep white matter and the small tumor solid component could be found near by the brain surface.Further, eight tumors had one or multiple small cysts. Two of them had eccentric single cyst and seven cases had multiple cysts.The cystic fluid of tumor had higher CT attenuation or higher T2 WI signal when compared with the cerebrospinal fluid in th same imaging slices.The solid component of tumor showed as iso-or hyperattenuation and calcification could be found in 12 tumors.All the tumor soild component had obvious enhancement af-ter contrast injection.Conclusion Supratentorial intra-cerebral parenchymal ependymomap had certain imaging features on CT and MR and well-known these features could improve our preoperative diagnostic accuracy.