Associations between Dynamic-Contrast enhanced MRI with histopathological features in cholangiocarcinoma.

Abstract

The associations between histopathology and imaging remain elusive and investigating underlying reasons of tumor microstructure resulting in an imaging phenotype is of clinical importance. The present study used cross-sectional guided biopsy specimen to employ the exact spatial biopsy localization to correlate the prebioptic magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with immunohistochemical stainings of the histopathological specimen. Twenty-seven patients with mass-forming cholangiocarcinoma (CCA) were included in the present analysis. All patients were imaged by a 1.5 T clinical scanner at last one month before the biopsy. The contrast enhanced dynamic sequences were analyzed with quantified signal intensities. The bioptic specimen were obtained by cross-sectional guided biopsy and was further analyzed with cell density, proliferation index (Ki67), tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes, tumor-stroma ratio as well as Collagen. There were no statistically significant correlations between the signal intensities of the MRI with cell count, tumor-stroma ratio, Ki67 index and CD45 count. Only a moderate correlation was identified between relative signal intensities of the venous phase with the Collagen-stained area (r=0.40, p=0.04). DCE MRI is not associated with histopathology features in CCA. The complex interactions of the tumor and the tumor micromilieu are not reflected by the MRI phenotype.