Pierluigi Di Giovanni1, Thomas W. Redpath1, Scott IK Semple2, Trevor S. Ahearn1, Fiona J. Gilbert1
1Radiology, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, Scotland, UK; 2Medical Physics, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
The trade off between spatial and temporal resolution plays an important role in DCE-MRI of the breast, especially when quantitative pharmacokinetic parameters are extracted. We show that Ktrans is underestimated and ve remains constant when the imaging temporal resolution is reduced. The error in Ktrans increases with a reduction in temporal resolution. Our work suggests that it may be possible to decrease the temporal resolution of a dynamic scan to 20 seconds and still maintain robust estimation of pharmacokinetic parameters. This in turn may allow higher spatial resolution images to be acquired.