Lessons from Brain Mapping in Surgery for Low-Grade Gliomas: Study of Cerebral Connectivity and Plasticity

Author(s):  
Hugues Duffau
2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (Supplement_2) ◽  
pp. ii204-ii205
Author(s):  
Kirby Manigos ◽  
Kevin Paul Ferraris ◽  
Joseph Erroll Navarro ◽  
Kenny Seng ◽  
Jose Carlos Alcazaren

Abstract Maximal safe resection of low-grade gliomas located in functional areas of the cortex while avoiding postsurgical neurologic deficits can be achieved by awake craniotomy with brain mapping. The effectiveness of this surgical technique is fairly established in the developed world, however it remains to be routinely applied in low-middle income countries due to limited resources and lack of equipment. We present the case of a 44 year-old, right-handed male who had a 2-year history of focal aware motor seizures but was otherwise neurologically intact. Neuropsychological testing revealed no cognitive impairment. Cranial magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) revealed a non-enhancing, ill-defined tumor centered on the left insula and extending into the frontotemporal opercula, corona radiata, and posterior limb of the internal capsule—hypointense by T1-weighted sequence and hyperintense by T2-weighted sequence, thus radiographically consistent with diffuse low-grade glioma. Blood-oxygen-level-dependent functional MRI revealed left hemispheric language dominance in the cortex overlying the tumor, but with no motor cortex involvement. The patient underwent a protocol-driven awake craniotomy, intraoperative positive brain mapping using standard cortical stimulator, transsylvian and transcortical transopercular microsurgical approaches to achieve greater than 80% excision of the tumor. Postoperatively, the patient was seizure-free and with similar neurocognitive status prior to the surgery. The patient had been following up for standard adjuvant chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Avoidance of postsurgical neurologic deficits and maximal cytoreduction can still be achieved by awake craniotomy with brain mapping in settings with limited resources. Despite the lack of other perioperative tools and adjuncts such as diffusion tensor imaging, intraoperative ultrasonography, and even intraoperative MRI that are routinely available in high-resource settings, we illustrate in this case that comparable outcomes could be achieved by overcoming hurdles and aiming for the asymptote to the up-to-date and ideal neurosurgical treatment for diffuse low-grade gliomas.


2009 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. E4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giulio Bertani ◽  
Enrica Fava ◽  
Giuseppe Casaceli ◽  
Giorgio Carrabba ◽  
Alessandra Casarotti ◽  
...  

Low-grade gliomas ([LGGs] WHO Grade II) are slow-growing intrinsic cerebral lesions that diffusely infiltrate the brain parenchyma along white matter tracts and almost invariably show a progression toward malignancy. The treatment of these tumors forces the neurosurgeon to face uncommon difficulties and is still a subject of debate. At the authors' institution, resection is the first option in the treatment of LGGs. It requires the combined efforts of a multidisciplinary team of neurosurgeons, neuroradiologists, neuropsychologists, and neurophysiologists, who together contribute to the definition of the location, extension, and extent of functional involvement that a specific lesion has caused in a particular patient. In fact, each tumor induces specific modifications of the brain functional network, with high interindividual variability. This requires that each treatment plan is tailored to the characteristics of the tumor and of the patient. Consequently, surgery is performed according to functional and anatomical boundaries to achieve the maximal resection with maximal functional preservation. The identification of eloquent cerebral areas, which are involved in motor, language, memory, and visuospatial functions and have to be preserved during surgery, is performed through the intraoperative use of brain mapping techniques. The use of these techniques extends surgical indications and improves the extent of resection, while minimizing the postoperative morbidity and safeguarding the patient's quality of life. In this paper the authors present their paradigm for the surgical treatment of LGGs, focusing on the intraoperative neurophysiological monitoring protocol as well as on the brain mapping technique. They briefly discuss the results that have been obtained at their institution since 2005 as well as the main critical points they have encountered when using this approach.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (7) ◽  
pp. 463 ◽  
Author(s):  
Muhaddisa Barat Ali ◽  
Irene Yu-Hua Gu ◽  
Mitchel S. Berger ◽  
Johan Pallud ◽  
Derek Southwell ◽  
...  

Brain tumors, such as low grade gliomas (LGG), are molecularly classified which require the surgical collection of tissue samples. The pre-surgical or non-operative identification of LGG molecular type could improve patient counseling and treatment decisions. However, radiographic approaches to LGG molecular classification are currently lacking, as clinicians are unable to reliably predict LGG molecular type using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies. Machine learning approaches may improve the prediction of LGG molecular classification through MRI, however, the development of these techniques requires large annotated data sets. Merging clinical data from different hospitals to increase case numbers is needed, but the use of different scanners and settings can affect the results and simply combining them into a large dataset often have a significant negative impact on performance. This calls for efficient domain adaption methods. Despite some previous studies on domain adaptations, mapping MR images from different datasets to a common domain without affecting subtitle molecular-biomarker information has not been reported yet. In this paper, we propose an effective domain adaptation method based on Cycle Generative Adversarial Network (CycleGAN). The dataset is further enlarged by augmenting more MRIs using another GAN approach. Further, to tackle the issue of brain tumor segmentation that requires time and anatomical expertise to put exact boundary around the tumor, we have used a tight bounding box as a strategy. Finally, an efficient deep feature learning method, multi-stream convolutional autoencoder (CAE) and feature fusion, is proposed for the prediction of molecular subtypes (1p/19q-codeletion and IDH mutation). The experiments were conducted on a total of 161 patients consisting of FLAIR and T1 weighted with contrast enhanced (T1ce) MRIs from two different institutions in the USA and France. The proposed scheme is shown to achieve the test accuracy of 74 . 81 % on 1p/19q codeletion and 81 . 19 % on IDH mutation, with marked improvement over the results obtained without domain mapping. This approach is also shown to have comparable performance to several state-of-the-art methods.


2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (Supplement_3) ◽  
pp. iii369-iii369
Author(s):  
Antonella Cacchione ◽  
Evelina Miele ◽  
Maria Chiara Lodi ◽  
Andrea Carai ◽  
Giovanna Stefania Colafati ◽  
...  

Abstract BACKGROUND MAPK pathway is the hallmark of pediatric low grade gliomas (pLGGs); hyperactivation of mTOR (mammalian target of rapamycin) might be a suitable biomarker for therapeutic response. We investigated the feasibility of Everolimus, mTOR inhibitor, in patients affected by pLGGs. METHODS Patients 1 to 18 years old, diagnosed with pLGG, with a positive tumor biopsy for mTOR/phospho-mTOR and radiological and / or clinical disease progression, treated at Bambino Gesù Children’s Hospital in Rome were evaluated. Tumor DNA methylation analysis was performed in 10 cases. Exclusion criteria included: Tuberous Sclerosis patients, Sub Ependymal Giant Astrocytoma. Everolimus was administered orally at a dose of 2.5 mg or 5 mg daily based on body weight. Patients were evaluated with brain MRI every 4, 8 and 12 months after treatment start and every six months thereafter. RESULTS 16 patients were enrolled from September 2014 and 2019. The median age was 7.5 years old. All patients had at least one adverse event. Events rated as severe (grade 3/4) were reported in 6 patients. Stomatitis was the most frequent adverse event. One patient discontinued treatment due to grade 4 toxicity (ulcerative stomatitis and fatigue). The median duration of treatment was 21 months (4–57 months). Brain MRI evaluations have showed disease stability in 11 patients, partial response in 2 patients and disease progression in 3 patients. CONCLUSIONS Everolimus has proven to be well tolerated and effective treatment in terms of disease stability in patients with pLGGs. It’s also an excellent example of chemo-free personalized approach.


2016 ◽  
Vol 32 (10) ◽  
pp. 1787-1787
Author(s):  
Gianpiero Tamburrini ◽  
Jose Hinojosa
Keyword(s):  

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document