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Abstract #2175

Delta T1 Method: An Automatic Post-Contrast ROI Selection Technique for Brain Tumors

Devyani Bedekar1,2, Todd Jensen3, Scott Rand1,4, Mark Malkin, 2,5, Jennifer Connelly, 2,5, Kathleen Schmainda, 2,6

1Radiology, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, United States; 2Translational Brain Tumor Research Program, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, United States; 3Imaging Biometrics, Milwaukee, WI, United States; 4Translational Brain Tumor Research Program, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, United States; 5Neurology, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, United States; 6Radiology & Biophysics, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, United States


The primary approach to monitoring patients with brain tumors is to obtain pre and post-contrast T1-weighted images. Bright areas on the pre-contrast images are suggestive of blood products, which may be a result or treatment, and are therefore not to be considered as enhancing lesions on the post-contrast images. However, the difference between the brightness that exists on both the post and pre-contrast images can be quite subtle, a condition that is occurring more frequently now with the increasing use of anti-angiogenic agents. Therefore it is becoming increasingly difficult to monitor patients with brain tumors simply by visually comparing differences in enhancement. As a solution in this report we propose an automatic method, the delta T1 method (dTM), which is capable of detecting even subtle enhancing tumor free of blood products, thereby enabling the automatic creation of ROIs in a fast and reliable manner that avoids subjective variability.