Effects of Flip Angle Variations on the Accuracy of Perfusion Parameters in DCE-MRI

Jiangsheng Yu¹, Yiqun Xue¹, Mark a Rosen¹, Christina S. Chu², Hee Kwon Song¹

In current DCE-MRI protocols for tumor assessment, the excitation flip angle is typically assumed to be exactly known and homogeneous throughout the imaging FOV. However, it is known that the angle could vary substantially due to inhomogeneous RF fields and slice profile effects. In this work, we evaluate the degree to which flip angle deviations can occur in a large FOV DCE-MRI protocol and determine how those variations affect the measurement accuracy of perfusion parameters Ktrans and ve.