Paula M.C. Donahue1, Allison O. Scott2, Rachelle Crescenzi2, Aditi Desai2, Vaughn Braxton2, and Manus J. Donahue2
1Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN, United States, 2Radiology, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN, United States
The
overall goal of this work is to develop quantitative biomarkers of lymphatic
system structure and function using noninvasive 3T MRI. Here, we focus on breast cancer treatment-related lymphedema
(BCRL) where we hypothesize quantitative T2 is elevated in patients
relative to controls resulting from greater fluid content in the region of
interests, and which reduces following manual lymphatic drainage (a commonly
performed therapy intervention).
Findings suggest abilities to detect
changes consistent with intervention-elicited lymphatic dynamics by using
internal measures of tissue composition from MRI otherwise not detected using
more common limb volume, bioimpedance spectroscopy and tissue dielectric constant
measures.
