Radiology, Vol 188, 747-749, Copyright © 1993 by Radiological Society of North America
Dural invasion by craniofacial and calvarial neoplasms: MR imaging and histopathologic evaluation
J Ahmadi, DR Hinton, HD Segall, WT Couldwell and RB Stanley
Department of Radiology, University of Southern California School of Medicine, Los Angeles 90033.
The authors prospectively correlated results of magnetic resonance (MR)
imaging and histologic examination of the dura in 17 patients with
craniofacial and calvarial neoplasms and possible intracranial extension.
Contrast material-enhanced MR imaging revealed dural enhancement in 14
patients and no enhancement in three. In four cases, the dura deep to the
tumor appeared as a continuous band of enhancement and there was a thin
unbroken hypointense zone between the dura and the tumor. Histologic
examination in these four patients revealed only dural inflammation without
neoplastic spread. In 10 patients, there was a break in the continuity of
the enhancement of the underlying dura or a portion of the dura and
overlying enhancing tumor could not be separated on MR images. The
hypointense zone was focally absent in nine of these cases, and in all 10
there was invasion of the dura by adjacent tumor. Among the other three
patients, in whom dural enhancement was not discernible, one had dural
invasion by tumor while the other two did not.
