Abstract #3496

Newbold K, Charles-Edwards E, Tang A, Castellano E, D'Arcy J

Pharmocokinetic models require arterial input functions (AIFs). AIFs from MR and CT data acquired at a temporal resolution of 0.5 sec from patients with head and neck cancer are compared in terms of quality and accuracy, to each other and to an MR AIF derived from arterial sampling. MR-derived AIFs have similar peak concentrations to that obtained by arterial sampling whereas, though less noisy, the peak concentrations shown in CT-derived AIFs are nearly 3 times higher. This is probably due to increased contrast agent volume, a factor that must be accounted for if CT-derived AIFs are applied to DCE-MRI data.