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Abstract #0208

The effects of intra-voxel contrast agent diffusion on the analysis of DCE-MRI data in realistic tissue domains

Ryan Thomas Woodall1, Stephanie L Barnes1, Anna G Sorace2, David A Hormuth II1, C Chad Quarles3, and Thomas E Yankeelov1

1Biomedical Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, United States, 2Dell Medical School, The University of Texas at Austin, TX, United States, 3Barrow Neurological Institute, AZ, United States

Standard compartmental models for quantitative dynamic contrast enhanced MRI (DCE-MRI) typically assume active delivery of contrast agent that is instantaneously distributed within the extravascular extracellular space within each imaging voxel. The goal of this study is to determine the error accumulated in the estimated pharmacokinetic parameters when these assumptions are not satisfied. Using finite element methods to model contrast agent arrival and diffusion throughout realistic tissue domains (obtained from histological stains of tissue sections from a murine cancer model), it was rigorously determined that parameterization error is highest in regions of low vascularity, and lowest in well-perfused regions.

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