Magnetic resonance imaging of soft tissue tumors

This article outlines the ability of MR imaging in staging, grading, tissue characterization, and posttherapeutic surveillance of soft tissue tumors. Well-known staging parameters, such as extent, relationship with adjacent s tructures, and detection of intralesional necrosis, are used in the MR prot ocol for locoregional staging. Bone scintigraphy and high-resolution CT sca n of the lungs are best methods for ruling out metastatic spread. A variety of (solitary or combinations of) grading parameters are described in the r adiological literature. The role of MR imaging is to afford recognition of these lesions that need fur-ther aggressive work-up, excluding all others. Despite controversial reports, the definite role of MR imaging in grading o f soft tissue tumors seems to become established. As for grading, a lot of individual characteristics used for tissue characterization have low sensit ivity, but combinations of parameters (age, site, signal intensities) are m ore useful and often allow to predict a specific diagnosis or to narrow dow n the list of differential diagnoses. Local recurrences of soft tissue tumo rs are frequent and can be detected accurately by an easy-to-use MR algorit hm.