Andrew C.H. Yung1, Sylvia Ng1,2, Jennifer Flexman1, Jenny C.H. Tso1, Donald Yapp1,3, Piotr Kozlowski1
1University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada; 2British Columbia Cancer Research Centre; 3British Columbia Cancer Research Centre, Vancouver, BC, Canada
We show here that perfusion parameter fits are improved when a population-averaged AIF is extracted from the DCE data in the current study, versus an assumed literature AIF (Lyng MRM 1998). DCE-MRI data were acquired in a xenograft mouse model of pancreatic cancer. Pixels were manually selected from the abdominal aorta from the contrast scans of study animals for inclusion into the population-averaged AIF. Chi-square reflects how closely the fits matched the data. In a representative tumour, using the literature AIF versus the measured population-averaged AIF produced higher chi-square in 85% of voxels (median increase in chi square was 38%).