Abstract #1710

Water Diffusion Is Disrupted in Low Collagen Containing Hypoxic Regions of Breast Cancer Xenograft

Samata Kakkad¹,², Jiangyang Zhang³, Alireza Akhbardeh¹, Meiyappan Solaiyappan¹, Venu Raman¹, Dieter Leibfritz², Kristine Glunde⁴, Zaver M. Bhujwalla⁴

¹JHU ICMIC Program, Division of Cancer Imaging Research, The Johns Hopkins University SOM, Baltimore, MD, United States; ²Department of Chemistry and Biology, University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany; ³Russell H. Morgan Department of Radiology and Radiological Science, The Johns Hopkins University SOM, Baltimore, MD, United States; ⁴JHU ICMIC Program, Division of Cancer Imaging Research, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, United States

Hypoxic tumor microenvironments are frequently observed in tumors and are associated with an aggressive phenotype and resistance to radiation and chemotherapy. We previously observed significantly fewer collagen fibers in hypoxic tumor regions. Diffusion tensor imaging is often used to distinguish between normal, benign and malignant breast tissue as a non-contrast imaging technique, since lower water diffusion and diffusion anisotropy parameters are observed in malignant tissue. Here we examined the relationship between low collagen containing hypoxic tumor regions and high resolution DTI and observed lower diffusion and diffusion anisotropy in hypoxic regions compared to normoxic regions within a breast cancer xenograft.