Errors in DCE MRI Measurements Due to Errors in Gd Concentration Estimates

Vishal Patil¹, Glyn Johnson¹

Dynamic Contrast-Enhanced MRI (DCE-MRI) is used to characterize the microcirculation in pathologies ranging from cancer to multiple sclerosis. Previous studies have shown that in tissue, the change in relaxation rate is not linearly proportional to gadolinium concentration, [Gd]. In this study we used computer simulations to investigate the effect of non-linearities on the accuracy of first-pass, T2* weighted DCE-MRI parameter estimates. Results show fractional error increasing approximately linearly with Gd dose in all estimated parameters with the error ranging from 5 10% in meningioma and 1-5% in glioma for a single dose and from 20 30% and 5 15% for triple dose.