Clinical Manifestations and Imaging Characteristics of Gliomatosis Cerebri with Pathological Confirmation

Objective: To explore the clinical manifestations and imaging characteristics of gliomatosis cerebri to raisethe awareness and improve its diagnostic accuracy for patients. Materials and
Methods: Clinical data, imagingcharacteristics and pathological examination of 12 patients with GC from Jan., 2008 to Jan., 2012 were analyzedretrospectively.
Results: Patients with GC were clinically manifested with headache, vomiting, repeated seizures,fatigue and unstable walking, most of whom had more than 2 lesions involving in parietal lobe, followed bytemporal lobe, frontal lobe, periventricular white matter and corpus callosum. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)showed diffuse distribution, T1-weighted images (T1WI) with equal and low signals and T2-weighted images(T2WI) with bilateral symmetrical high diffuse signals. There was no reinforcement by enhancement scanningand signals were different in diffusion-weighted images (DWI). The higher the tumor staging, the stronger thesignals. Pathological examination showed neuroastrocytoma in which tumor tissues were manifested by infiltrativegrowth in blood vessels and around neurons.
Conclusions: In clinical diagnosis of GC, much attention should bepaid to the diffuse distribution of imaging characteristics, incomplete matching between clinical and imagingcharacteristics and confirmation by combining with histopathological examination.