Matthias Christian Schabel1, 2
1Advanced Imaging Research Center, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, OR, United States; 2Radiology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, United States
We describe a new impulse response model for analysis of DCE-MRI that mathematically unifies the Tofts-Kety (TK), Extended Tofts-Kety (ETK), Adiabatic Tissue Homogeneity (ATH), and Two Compartment Exchange (2CX) models. This model introduces a distribution of capillary transit times and includes a parameter describing the shape of this distribution that continuously varies between the ATH and 2CX limits. in vivo results in three human brain tumors suggest that this shape parameter takes on values spanning the range of possible values and may provide an imaging biomarker characterizing disorder of the capillary vascular bed.
Keywords