Marco Borri1,
Maria A. Schmidt1, Ceri Powell2, Dow-Mu Koh, 13,
Angela Riddell3, Kate Newbold2, Martin O. Leach1
1CR-UK
and EPSRC Cancer Imaging Centre, Institute of Cancer Research and Royal
Marsden, Sutton, Surrey, United Kingdom; 2Head and Neck Dept., The
Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, Sutton, Surrey, United Kingdom; 3Radiology
Dept., The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, Sutton, Surrey, United Kingdom
One of the main challenges in the management of head and neck squamous cell carcinomas (HNSCC) is the inability to predict outcome because of tumour heterogeneity. We propose a method, based on cluster analysis, to robustly partition head and neck lesions in sub-regions using complementary functional information from DCE and DWI. This approach was able to spatially describe functional heterogeneity in a cohort of patients with histologically proven HNSCC undergoing radical chemoradiotherapy, and allowed identification of sub-regions of the tumours which were affected differently by treatment and their characterization with functional parameters.