Hai-Ling Margaret Cheng1,2
1Research Institute & Diagnostic
Imaging, The Hospital for Sick Children,
Non-model
DCE-MRI parameters such as the initial area under the uptake curve (IAUC) do
not require arterial input function (AIF) measurement or model-fitting, and
can hence be more robust than pharmacokinetic modeling. However, the IAUC is
intractably correlated with biological parameters such as the transfer
constant Ktrans and interstitial space ve. Herein, a modified IAUC (mIAUC)
method is presented. The mIAUC parameters are strongly correlated with true
Ktrans and ve, and are outperformed by pharmacokinetic parameters only when a
rapidly sampled AIF is used. The proposed mIAUC method retains advantages of
non-model DCE-MRI while providing stronger correlation with underlying
physiology.