Yiqun Xue1, Jiangsheng Yu1, Mark
A. Rosen1, Ramesh Rengan2, Hyun Seon Kang1,
Sarah Englander1, Rosemarie Mick3, Hee Kwon Song1
1Department of Radiology, University
of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States; 2Department of
Radiation Oncology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United
States; 3Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, University
of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States
In DCE-MRI, perfusion parameters are particularly sensitive to the accuracy of the baseline (pre-contrast) signal of the AIF and tumor. However, the SNR of the pre-contrast signal can be low, since TR is typically much shorter than the T1 of blood and tissue. We describe a method to compensate for errors in the baseline DCE-MRI signal due to low SNR. The method involves utilization of a separate low flip angle image to better estimate the true baseline signal of the dynamic series. We demonstrate that the in vivo repeatability of Ktrans is improved with this technique.
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