Abstract
Accurately measuring arterial input function (AIF) is essential for quantitative analysis of dynamic contrast-enhanced (DCE) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). We used the indicator dilution principle to evaluate the accuracy of AIF measured directly from an artery following a low-dose contrast media ultrafast DCE-MRI. In total, 15 patients with biopsy-confirmed localized prostate cancers were recruited. Cardiac MRI (CMRI) and ultrafast DCE-MRI were acquired on a Philips 3 T Ingenia scanner. The AIF was measured at iliac arties following injection of a low-dose (0.015 mmol/kg) gadolinium (Gd) contrast media. The cardiac output (CO) from CMRI (COCMRI) was calculated from the difference in ventricular volume at diastole and systole measured on the short axis of heart. The CO from DCE-MRI (CODCE) was also calculated from the AIF and dose of the contrast media used. A correlation test and Bland–Altman plot were used to compare COCMRI and CODCE. The average (±standard deviation [SD]) area under the curve measured directly from local AIF was 0.219 ± 0.07 mM·min. The average (±SD) COCMRI and CODCE were 6.52 ± 1.47 L/min and 6.88 ± 1.64 L/min, respectively. There was a strong positive correlation (r = 0.82, P < .01) and good agreement between COCMRI and CODCE. The CODCE is consistent with the reference standard COCMRI. This indicates that the AIF can be measured accurately from an artery with ultrafast DCE-MRI following injection of a low-dose contrast media.
Highlights
Dynamic contrast-enhanced (DCE) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has been widely used for cancer diagnosis, as well as to quantitatively and noninvasively estimate a lesion’s physiological characteristics [1,2,3,4,5]
The indicator dilution principle was used to verify the accuracy of arterial input function (AIF) measured at iliac arties from ultrafast DCE-MRI scan after injection of the low-dose contrast media
We showed that the cardiac output (CO) measured from ultrafast DCE-MRI is consistent with the “gold standard” CO measured from the shortaxis cardiac MRI (CMRI)
Summary
Dynamic contrast-enhanced (DCE) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has been widely used for cancer diagnosis, as well as to quantitatively and noninvasively estimate a lesion’s physiological characteristics [1,2,3,4,5]. To extract reliable physiological parameters, an accurate AIF must be measured for each patient to account for variations in cardiac output (CO), systemic vascular function, and injection protocol [8]. To avoid problems with accurate measurement of patient-specific AIFs, a population AIF is often used in quantitative DCE-MRI data analysis [15,16,17]. This does not account for the large interpatient and interscan variability, and this makes it difficult to compare physiological parameters between patients or measure changes in each patient over time [18, 19]
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