Shubhangi Agarwal1, Carlos Renteria1, Xiangxing Kong2, Yanqing Tian2, and Vikram Kodibagkar1
1School of Biological and Health Systems Engineering, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, United States, 2Biodesign Institute, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, United States
Tumor hypoxia is a severe problem in oncology, leading to enhanced
metastatic potential and poor response to therapies. The advent of GdDO3NI—a
hypoxia-binding contrast agent, serves to facilitate therapies by highlighting
hypoxic regions on tumors. Relaxivity studies were performed and image
registration were executed between modalities to validate the efficacy of this
novel contrast agent to pimonidazole: the gold standard for immunohistochemical
hypoxia imaging. Results showed a strong correlation in tumor boundaries and
hypoxic fractions between modalities. The hypoxic regions showed lower
correlation than expected however, attributed to the difference in tissue
content resulting from discrepancies in slice thickness.