Stanford offers world-class spine and brain tumor treatments delivered by a specialized expert team. At our Brain and Spine Tumor Center at Stanford Neuroscience Health Center, we provide a full range of care. Services include preoperative visits, lab work, imaging, surgery, radiation therapy, and follow-up visits.
List of MD’s
Seema Nagpal, Neuro-oncologist
Kate Therkelsen, Neuro-oncologist
Gordon Li, Neurosurgeon
Steven Chang, Neurosurgeon, Neuroscience Professor
The Tumor Quant service utilizes 3D imaging to differentiate between residual tumor tissue and treatment-induced damage, such as radiation necrosis, in patients with high-grade gliomas. Traditional MRI scans often struggle to make this distinction, complicating the assessment of treatment effectiveness.
Our approach integrates blood flow data from perfusion imaging with detailed MRI enhancement data. This combination generates a map of the tumor, useful for distinguishing actual tumor tissue from necrotic areas. Such accuracy is important for tailoring patient treatment plans, allowing doctors to make informed decisions regarding subsequent care steps.
Our Tumor Response Service, grounded in the Tumor Response Assessment Criteria (TRAC), plays a role in the fight against cancer by tracking tumor progression and response to treatments. TRAC reports, derived from advanced 3D imaging measurements, provide a detailed medical imaging perspective on tumor changes over time through longitudinal analysis. This method collects data points across the treatment timeline, offering a comprehensive view of the tumor's reaction to therapy and guiding healthcare professionals in making informed adjustments to treatment plans.
When a TRAC report is requested, our technologists first establish a baseline by measuring the dimensions of target and non-target tumors from initial scans. Follow-up scans, typically conducted three months into treatment, allow for repeated measurements and the accumulation of data analyzed according to specific tumor response criteria, tailored to the cancer type and treatment regimen. The analysis results, securely stored within our system, are presented in various formats such as tabulated summaries, stacked charts, and galleries of snapshots from DICOM images, enabling a multifaceted view of the patient's cancer journey.
Standardized tumor response criteria serve as the foundation for these evaluations, creating a consistent framework for assessing how tumors shrink, disappear, remain stable, or grow in response to therapy. This structured approach supports healthcare providers in evaluating treatment effectiveness, making informed decisions on continuing, modifying, or seeking alternative treatments based on the unique nature of the cancer, the treatment strategy, and the evolving landscape of cancer therapies. Our service, through TRAC, empowers clinicians with precise insights to optimize patient outcomes in the complex fight against cancer.
