Investigation of a Logistic Model for T2* Dynamic Susceptibility Contrast Magnetic Resonance Imaging (dscMRI) Perfusion Studies

• DOI: 10.1097/rct.0b013e3182372a12
• Publication Date: 2011-11-12T11:12:20Z
• Authors: Graeme M. Wardlaw; Raimond Wong; Colm Boylan; Ryan Rebello; Michael D. Nosewo...
• Keywords: Rectal Neoplasms; Microcirculation; Contrast Media; Middle Aged; Image Enhancement; 03 medical and health sciences; Logistic Models; 0302 clinical medicine; Organometallic Compounds; Humans; Algorithms; Magnetic Resonance Angiography

There are a number of T1- and T2-based dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging pharmacokinetic modeling approaches to study cancer microvasculature. Alternatively, model-free approaches offer an easy, quantitative assessment of microcirculation. In this work, we investigate a 6-parameter model-free approach applied to a T2*-weighted echo-planar imaging bolus response curve. We tested this new approach on a small cohort of patients with clinically diagnosed primary rectal carcinoma before adjuvant chemoradiotherapy and surgical excision. Comparison with healthy muscle tissue shows that logistic parameters P1/P2, P4, and P5 offer good discrimination between tumor and healthy tissue. Bolus response logistic parameters P4 and P5 have been implicated in previous T1-based works as being important in the assessment of cancer malignancy. Further comparison of T2* parameters with signal attenuation amplitude (maximum signal drop) and percentage baseline signal loss also corroborates the models' ability to quantify the microenvironment.