Abstract
Purpose: Relationship between CT or MR images and histological findings, especially vascularity, has not been adequately evaluated. The purpose of this study was to investigate correlation between contrast enhancement on CT and MRI and histological findings in posterior mediastinal ganglioneuromas. Materials and Methods: Contrast-enhanced (CE) CT (n = 11) and CE MRI (n = 5) of 12 patients with ganglioneuroma were reviewed. The attenuation, signal intensity, and dynamic enhancement pattern of the tumors were evaluated. The vascularity was histologically evaluated by the numbers of vessels. Results: Enhancement on CE-CT was none, mild, moderate, and high enhancement in 5 (45%), 2 (18%), 3 (27%), and 1 (9%) of the 11 lesions, respectively. Dynamic MRI showed mild, moderate and high enhancement in 3 (60%), 1 (20%) and 1 (20%) cases, respectively. The level of contrast enhancement correlated well only with the number of capillary vessels (r = 0.79, P = 0.0037). Conclusion: The posterior mediastinal ganglioneuromas sometimes show insufficient enhancement particularly on CE-CT. The level of enhancement might correlate with the amount of capillary vessels.
Highlights
Ganglioneuromas are neoplasms that are derived from the sympathetic ganglia and usually occur in the posterior mediastinum
computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance (MR) features together with surgical and pathological findings in the 12 ganglioneuromas are shown in Tables 1 and 2
Among the 4 neoplasms scanned with dynamic CE-CT protocol, 1 (25%), 2 (50%), 0 (0%) and 1 (25%) showed no (Figure 1), mild (Figure 2), moderate (Figure 3) and high (Figure 4) enhancement, respectively
Summary
Ganglioneuromas are neoplasms that are derived from the sympathetic ganglia and usually occur in the posterior mediastinum. There have been a few studies that evaluated contrast enhancement of posterior mediastinal ganglioneuromas and correlated it with histological findings [1]-[3]. Relationship between computed tomography (CT) or magnetic resonance (MR) images and histological findings, especially vascularity, has not been adequately evaluated. The aim of this study was to correlate contrast-enhanced (CE)-CT and CE-MR findings with histological findings such as density of various kinds of blood vessels in 12 cases with ganglioneuroma
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