Background and purpose: Medical imaging has come a long way from CT was invented in the 70s to today's CT- and MRI-technology. With today's technology we can produce detailed images of the brain tumor's size and location, damage to the blood-brain barrier and relationship to adjacent structures. The aim of the thesis is to present an overview of the modern MRI-techniques and the extent to which they provide additional information about a tumor's malignancy and growth pattern.
Material and methods: The thesis is based on medical textbooks and articles found by systematic and non-systematic search in Pubmed/Medline and UpToDate, as well as articles and illustrations given by supervisor. Medical websites such as www.legehandboka.no (NEL) and www.tidsskriftet.no were also used.
Results/Conclusions: Advanced MRI methods such as diffusion, perfusion and spectroscopy can give us a better understanding of the pathophysiological features of brain tumors. These methods can be seen as a complementary tool to conventional MRI. Thus, it is hoped that they can help to better differentiate and grade brain tumors as well as to distinguish between neoplastic and non-neoplastic lesions
