Abstract #0165

Investigating Tumour Vascular Connectivity with Resting State MRI & Independent Component Analysis

Miguel R. Gonalves¹,², Simon Walker-Samuel¹, Sean P. Johnson², Rosamund B. Pedley², Mark F. Lythgoe¹

¹UCL Centre for Advanced Biomedical Imaging, Division of Medicine and Institute of Child Health, University College London, London, United Kingdom; ²UCL Cancer Institute, London, United Kingdom

Solid tumours were found to exhibit oscillating patterns of hypoxia and reoxygenation due to microregional instabilities in blood flow and oxygen delivery. This phenomenon has been linked to a chemotherapy and radiotherapy resistance, and a correlation has been found between these fluctuating regions and measurements of tumour vascular functionality. Independent Component Analysis (ICA) is a computational technique previously used in the brain to identify patterns of activation during resting state. Given the similarity between oscillations in oxygenation in tumours and brain we investigated the utility of ICA to study and characterise these cyclical events in tumours.