Abstract #2734

A Comparison Between Individual and Population Based Arterial Input Functions in the Analysis of DCE-MRI Breast Cancer Data

Xia Li¹, E. Brian Welch², A. Bapsi Chakravarthy³, Lei Xu⁴, Mary Loveless⁵, Ingrid Mayer⁶, Mark Kelley⁷, Ingrid Meszoely⁸, Julie Means-Powell⁷, John C. Gore⁹, Thomas E. Yankeelov¹

¹Radiology and Radiological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, United States; ²Philips Healthcare, Nashville, TN, United States; ³Radiation Oncology, Vanderbilt University; ⁴Biostatistics, Vanderbilt University; ⁵Biomedical Engineering, Vanderbilt University; ⁶Medical Oncology, Vanderbilt University; ⁷Surgical Oncology, Vanderbilt University; ⁸Radiology, Vanderbilt University; ⁹Radiology and Radiological Sciences , Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, United States

The accurate determination of the arterial input function, or AIF, plays an important role to quantitative analysis of dynamic contrast enhanced MRI (DCE-MRI) data. We have proposed (in a separate abstract) a simple and efficient method to obtain the AIF, through tracking an initial seed point placed within the axillary artery. Using this method, we obtain the AIF for each individual patient (AIFind) and the population averaged AIF (AIFpop). We apply the AIFs to two DCE-MRI pharmacokinetic models to compare the physiological parameters.