Role of MRS in Brain Lesions

The annual global age-standardized incidence of primary malignant brain tumors is \~3.7 per 100,000 for males and 2.6 per 100,000 for females . Rates appear to be higher more in developed countries (males, 5.8 and females, 4.1 per 100,000) than in less developed countries (males 3.0 and females 2.1 per 100,000). More than half of all brain tumors are Intraparenchymal . Diagnosis of brain lesions and other focal intracranial lesions based on imaging methods alone is still facing a challenging problem. Accurate diagnosis is fundamentally vital for clinical management in patients with brain tumors. CT and standard MRI are the first line imaging modalities in evaluation of brain lesions; however, it does not always provide more precise details and characterization of the lesions whether it is benign or malignant. Conventional imaging techniques do not provide exact information about vascularity, cellularity and metabolism of the mass lesion . Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (MR Spectroscopy) is one of the tools used to determine themolecular structures of compounds or to detect the compound presence. MR Spectroscopy provides metabolic information from living tissues. The major brain metabolites detected are choline, creatine, N-acetyl aspartate (NAA), lactate, myoinositol, glutamine, glutamate, lipids and the amino acids leucine and alanine. Brain lesions show abnormal values of these metabolites as compared to normal tissue.Our study aims to determine the accuracy of MRS in differentiation between neoplastic and non neoplastic lesions and determination the type of neoplasm, Discriminating neoplastic from non-neoplastic brain lesions is extremely necessary since a misdiagnosis can lead to a severe effect on neurosurgery and exposure to toxic chemotherapy or radiotherapy, which may cause damage to brain tissues.