University of California at San Diego researchers have found evidence that the appearance of brain cancer tumors in magnetic resonance images (MRIs) can be used to predict the cancer’s genomic profiles–traits associated with how the tumors grow or react to treatment.

They looked for connections between the ten types of tumors shown in the MRIs and genetically linked cancer characteristics such as blood-vessel growth and cell proliferation by studying the patients’ biopsies using microarrays.

Radiologists have seen some of these connections anecdotally but haven’t had the data to back them up.