Vessel Size Index and Blood Volume Imaging in Pancreatic Cancer Xenograft Model Using Ferumoxide

Andrew C.H. Yung¹, Jenny C.H. Tso¹, Jennifer Flexman¹, Sylvia Ng^1,2, Donald Yapp^1,2, Piotr Kozlowski¹

The use of ferumoxide is investigated for use in the blood volume fraction (BV) and vessel size index (VSI) measurements of a xenograft mouse model of pancreatic cancer. The ferumoxide susceptibility contrast remains stable for at least 1.5 hours after injection. Spectroscopy measurements produce a susceptibility value of 1.37 ppm for ferumoxide in blood. BV was well correlated with a histology measure of perfused tumour vessels, and VSI showed good correlation with BV. We show that ferumoxide can be successfully used in BV and VSI measurements.