Steven P. Sourbron 1
Conventional tracer-kinetic analysis of DSC- and DCE-MRI
assumes that all voxels are isolated systems supplied by
the same arterial concentration. Here a more general
tracer-kinetic field theory is developed that models
voxels as interconnected systems that only exchange
indicator with their immediate neighbours. Explicit
field models are derived for total blood flow,
microvascular blood flow, endothelial permeability and
interstitial diffusion. With these models, the spatial
structure of the measured concentration can be exploited
to characterize perfusion anisotropy, and to eliminate
systematic errors due to bolus dispersion and
large-vessel contamination.
