Comparison of the Standard Gadolinium Concentration & Signal Difference Methodologies for Computation of Perfusion Parameters in DCE-MRI at Various SNRs

Hee Kwon Song¹, Yiqun Xue¹, Jiangsheng Yu¹, Sarah Englander¹, Hyunseon C Kang¹, Mark a Rosen¹

Pre-contrast signal levels in DCE-MRI datasets are often low due to the short TRs used to achieve high temporal resolution. Since this baseline signal is required to normalize the entire dynamic curve in computing tissue gadolinium concentration, low SNR can cause biases in the measurement of tissue perfusion. Recently, it was shown that the perfusion parameters could be computed more directly using absolute signal differences without the need for conversion to gadolinium concentration. In the current work, the performance of the signal difference method is compared to conventional methodologies for computing tissue perfusion in the presence of various noise levels.