Abstract #0384

Yang C, Medved M, Karczmar G, Stadler W

We have developed a multiple reference tissue method (MRTM) to estimate the contrast agent arterial input function (AIF) in DCE-MRI. Its central assumption is that the AIFs of the multiple (2 or more) reference tissues have the same shape. Due to the heterogeneity of tumors, multiple reference tissues can be obtained from a single tumor ROI using a cluster analysis. The applications to clinical DCE-MRI data of renal cell cancer suggest that the MRTM can be generally applied. The estimated AIFs provide excellent fit to the data and closely resemble the AIFs measured by blood sampling reported in the literature.