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Abstract #0816

A Robust Method for Reducing Inflow Artifacts in the Arterial Input Function of Dynamic Contrast Enhanced Data Sets

Yutong Duan1,2, Ralf Berthold Loeffler1, Ruitian Song1, Aaryani Tipirneni1, Sheri Spunt3, Niels Oesingmann4, Anne Viano2, Claudia Maria Hillenbrand1

1Radiological Sciences, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, TN, United States; 2Physics, Rhodes College, Memphis, TN, United States; 3Oncology, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, TN, United States; 4Siemens Medical Solutions USA, Inc., New York, NY, United States


This study includes techniques that smooth the curve by removing the spikes from the curve, and a simulation test that validates this optimization with multiple sets of noise reproducing the inflow effect.Four sets of artificial noise were extracted from real patient data and used to simulate the abrupt spikes due to the inflow effect. After noise was applied the GFR values were calculated and compared with the reference GFR. The correlation between the original AIF and the two gamma variate function varied from 0.95 to 0.99. The smoothing method was able to reduce the inflow artifact on the AIF signal.