Intracranial meningiomas: correlation between MR imaging and histology in fifty patients

The magnetic resonance (MR) findings in 50 surgically verified intracranial meningiomas were reviewed. An attempt was made to correlate their signal intensity on spin echo (SE) T1-weighted, proton density N(H)], and T2-weighted images with the different histologic subtypes. The T1-weighted images were nonspecific in differentiating the subtypes of meningiomas. On proton density and T2-weighted images, more information was available, but there remained large group (46%) of meningiomas that were not classifiable. The average signal intensity scores on T1-weighted, proton density, and T2-weighted images in the different histologic subtypes were correlated with each other using the Student t test. Only one significant correlation (psammomatous-anaplastic) and three almost significant correlations (syncytial-transitional or psammomatous and transitional-psammomatous) were found. Different histologic subtypes may have a different MR appearance, but this does not suffice to reach a histologic diagnosis by MR imaging.