The effects of intravoxel contrast agent diffusion on the analysis of DCE-MRI data in realistic tissue domains.

ABSTRACT:

Purpose

Quantitative evaluation of dynamic contrast enhanced MRI (DCE-MRI) allows for estimating perfusion, vessel permeability, and tissue volume fractions by fitting signal intensity curves to pharmacokinetic models. These compart mental models assume rapid equilibration of contrast agent within each voxel. However, there is increasing evidence that this assumption is violated for small molecular weight gadolinium chelates. To evaluate the error introduced by this invalid assumption, we simulated DCE-MRI experiments with volume fractions computed from entire histological tumor cross-sections obtained from murine studies.

Methods

A 2D finite element model of a diffusion-compensated Tofts-Kety model was developed to simulate dynamic T₁ signal intensity data. Digit

SUBMITTER: Woodall RT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5876107 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature