Purpose:The majority of quantitative analyses involving dynamic contrast enhanced (DCE) MRI have been performed to obtain kinetic parameters such as Ktrans and ve. Such analyses are generally performed assuming a “reversible” tissue compartment, where the tracer is assumed to be rapidly equilibrated between the plasma and tissue compartments. However, some tumor vascular environments may be more suited for a “non‐reversible” tissue compartment, where, as with FDG PET imaging, the tracer is continuously deposited into the tissue compartment (or the return back to the plasma compartment is very slow in the imaging time scale). Therefore, Patlak and Logan analyses, which represent tools for the “non‐reversible” and “reversible” modeling, respectively, were performed to better characterize the brain tumor vascular environment.Methods:A voxel‐by‐voxel analysis was performed to generate both Patlak and Logan plots in two brain tumor patients, one with grade III astrocytoma and the other with grade IV astrocytoma or glioblastoma. The slopes of plots and the r‐square were then obtained by linear fitting and compared for each voxel.Results:The 2‐dimensional scatter plots of Logan (Y‐axis) vs. Patlak slopes (X‐axis) clearly showed increased Logan slopes for glioblastoma (Figure 3A). The scatter plots of goodness‐of‐fit (Figure 3B) also suggested glioblastoma, relative to grade III astrocytoma, might consist of more voxels that are kinetically Logan‐like (i.e. rapidly equilibrated extravascular space and active vascular environment). Therefore, the enhanced Logan‐like behavior (and the Logan slope) in glioblastoma may imply an increased fraction of active vascular environment, while the enhanced Patlak‐like behavior implies the vascular environment permitting a relatively slower washout of the tracer.Conclusion:Although further verification is required, the combination of Patlak and Logan analyses in DCE MRI may be useful in characterizing the tumor vascular environment, and thus, may have implications in tumor grading and monitoring response to anti‐vascular therapy.