Cerebral Neoplasms

Excerpt

In the past, before 2016, brain tumors were classified into several types, and their respective grades based largely on histology. While this allowed for categorization of tumors, the grading did not always correlate with overall survival. At the same time, neuro-oncology research work demonstrated that tumoral molecular genetics allowed for a better correlation with overall survival. This led to the Revised 2016 WHO classification of brain tumors, which for the first time in neuro-pathology saw the incorporation of mutation profiles applied to classification of brain tumors. Continued development in the field of neuro-oncology meant better categorization of previously described tumors, and the description of newer tumors. This led to another update, the 2021 classification of brain tumors. This chapter provides an overview of these revised brain tumor classification systems, and discusses the imaging profiles of certain select yet important tumor types in detail.