Soft Tissue Tumors of the Tongue

Squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) could be a very aggressive cancer and has a bad prognosis if not detected early and thus is associated with high mortality. The development of simple and reliable biomarkers for the early detection of SCC is one of the solutions to better diagnose, treat these tumors, evaluate and monitor treatments, and hence reduce mortality. In a previous work, the investigators demonstrated the ability of Proton Magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H-MRS) to non-invasively assess spectroscopic and metabolic profiles of tongue tissue in healthy subjects. In the present work, the investigators challenge the use of in-vivo 1H-MRS as a potential method for non-invasive metabolic monitoring of patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the tongue undergoing therapy. Thus the main objective is to study the spectroscopic and metabolic differences, e.g. including variation in the metabolite TMA-Cho (trimethylamine-choline), of tongue tissue between healthy subjects and in patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the tongue, before and after surgery.