Olivier Maciej Girard1, Paul O. Scheibe2,
David R. Vera1, Robert F. Mattrey1
1Department of Radiology , University
of California, San Diego, CA, United States; 2Ixzar, Inc., Arroyo
Grande, CA, United States
Dynamic
Contrast Enhanced (DCE) MRI is a promising tool to investigate microvascular
tissue properties. Although it has been applied in various clinical studies
its accuracy still remains subject to debate since numerous errors may bias
the pharmacokinetic (PK) parameter estimates. Here we propose to study the
propagation of measurement noise and flip angle (FA) uncertainty up to the PK
parameter estimates using a MonteCarlo simulation. Our results show that in
the high FA regime, a high FA uncertainty leads to a much lower bias in the
PK parameter estimates while keeping the standard error due to noise close to
its minimum.