Monitoring response to convection-enhanced taxol delivery in brain tumor patients using diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging

Convection-enhanced drug delivery (CEDD) is a novel approach to enhance the delivery of drugs directly into brain tumors. We have used diffusion-weigh ted MRI (DWMRI) to monitor the effects of intratumoral CEDD in three brain tumor patients treated with Taxol, Clear changes in the images and the wate r diffusion parameters were observed shortly after the initiation of treatm ent. Initially, a bright area corresponding to decreased diffusion appeared , followed by the appearance of a dark area of increased diffusion within t he bright area. The time to appearance of the dark area varied among the pa tients, suggesting different response rates, In this work, we have demonstr ated the feasibility of using DWMRI as a noninvasive tool to achieve unique early tissue characterization not attainable by other conventional imaging methods.