VIDEO: Diagnostic techniques for brain cancer need improvement

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There's been tremendous advance in MRI imaging, but MRI imaging has some limitations. One of the major clinical problems with brain tumors is the phenomenon of pseudoprogression, where radiation therapy or immunotherapies can increase the vascularity and permeability of blood vessels, leading to more dye coming out and making the scans look worse when, in fact, it's a treatment effect and not the effect of tumor progressing. In this phenomenon of pseudoprogression, it's been very difficult to diagnose accurately with MRI imaging. Recently, the [Response Assessment in Neuro-Oncology (RANO)] working group proposed RANO 2.0 and provided some guidelines on how to determine pseudoprogression more accurately. But the other area where there has been progress is in the use of profusion imaging to diagnose pseudoprogression and then also amino acid PET imaging. All of these will hopefully improve our ability to separate pseudoprogression from true tumor progression and help both in the treatment of patients as well as in the identification of more effective novel therapies.