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Abstract #0281

Identification of Arterio-Venous Shunts by Vessel Architectural Imaging Reveals Mechanisms of Vascular Normalization during Anti-Angiogenic Therapy

Guro K. Rognsvag 1 , Atle Bjornerud 1,2 , A. Gregory Sorensen 3,4 , Patrick Y. Wen 5 , Tracy T. Batchelor 6,7 , Rakesh K. Jain 6 , and Kyrre E. Emblem 1,3

1 The Intervention Centre, Oslo University Hospital, Oslo, Oslo, Norway, 2 Dept of Physics, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway, 3 Department of Radiology and Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States, 4 Siemens Healthcare, Malvern, PA, United States, 5 Center for Neuro-Oncology, Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women's Cancer Center and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States, 6 Department of Radiation Oncology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States, 7 Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States

The microvasculature of tumors is abnormal and tortuous with arterio-venous shunts. Shunts are short high-flow vascular pathways that cause parts of the blood flow to bypass capillary regions, thus impairing delivery of oxygen to the tissue and increasing resistance to therapy. Vessel architectural imaging (VAI) has recently been introduced as a new paradigm for in vivo assessment of cancer vasculature. By performing Monte Carlo simulations of normal and shunting tissue, and evaluating MRI data of patients undergoing anti-angiogenic therapy, we show that VAI identifies arterio-venous shunts and help reveal mechanism of normalization during anti-angiogenic therapy.

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