Thomas Christen1, Benjamin Lemasson2,3,
Nicolas Pannetier3,4, Regine Farion3,4, Chantal Remy3,4,
Greg Zaharchuk1, Emmanuel L. Barbier3,4
1Department of radiology,
Stanford University, Stanford, CA, United States; 2Departments of
Radiology, University of Michigan, Center for Molecular Imaging,, Ann Arbor,
MI, United States; 3Grenoble Institut des Neurosciences, Grenoble,
France; 4U836, INSERM, Grenoble, France
We have analyzed how the addition of the transverse relaxation parameter (T2), the macroscopic field inhomogeneities (∆B0) and the blood volume fraction (BVf) to the estimates of magnetic resonance T2* influences the interpretation of BOLD oximetry results in a rat cerebral tumor model. We found no significant correlations between T2* and all other parameters in both tumor and healthy tissues. A lack of inclusion of any of these parameters may lead to incorrect assumptions about tumor oxygenation. Combining the parameters according to a quantitative BOLD approach leads to blood oxygenation (SO2) values independent of the initial T2* and consistent with previous measurements.