Imaging Invasion: Micro-CT imaging of adamantinomatous craniopharyngioma highlights cell type specific spatial relationships of tissue invasion

Tissue invasion and infiltration by brain tumours poses a clinical challenge, with destruction of structures leading to morbidity. We assessed whether micro-CT could be used to map tumour invasion in adamantinomatous craniopharyngioma (ACP), and whether it could delineate ACPs and their intrinsic components from surrounding tissue. Three anonymised archival frozen ACP samples were fixed, iodinated and imaged using a micro-CT scanner prior to the use of standard histological processing and immunohistochemical techniques. We demonstrate that micro-CT imaging can non-destructively give detailed 3D structural information of tumours in volumes with isotropic voxel sizes of 4–6 microns, which can be correlated with traditional histology and immunohistochemistry. Such information complements classical histology by facilitating virtual slicing of the tissue in any plane and providing unique detail of the three dimensional relationships of tissue compartments. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s40478-016-0321-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.