Abstract #2067

On the feasibility of data-driven estimation of Markov random field parameters for IVIM modelling of abdominal DW-MRI: insights into which parameters can be reliably estimated from clinical data

Matthew R Orton¹, Neil P Jerome¹, Mihaela Rata¹, David J Collins¹, Khurum Khan², Nina Tunariu³, David Cunningham², Thorsten Feiweier⁴, Dow-Mu Koh³, and Martin O Leach¹

¹CRUK Cancer Imaging Centre, Division of Radiotherapy and Imaging, Institute of Cancer Research, London, United Kingdom, ²Department of Medical Oncology, Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, London, United Kingdom, ³Department of Radiology, Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, London, United Kingdom, ⁴Siemens Healthcare, Erlangen, Germany

The intravoxel incoherent motion model is of great interest as it gives a more complete characterization of DWI signals. However, estimates of the pseudo-diffusion coefficient D* are noisy, which can be mitigated using Markov random field (MRF) models. The MRF smoothing weights are usually subjectively chosen; by removing this requirement, we show that while the smoothing weights for the pseudo-diffusion volume fraction and diffusion coefficient can be estimated from the data, smoothing weights for D* cannot. This suggests that with currently available data, D* estimates require stabilization by imposing subjective constraints of some kind, such as the MRF used here.

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