Bing Wen Zheng1, Dennis Lai-Hong Cheong1,2,
Christopher Au1, Eileen Ng1, Soo Chin Lee3,
Thian chor Ng1,4
1 Clinical Imaging Research
Center, A*STAR & National
University of Singapore, 117456, Singapore; 2Neuroradiology
Department, National Neuroscience Institute, 308433, Singapore; 3Departments
of Hematology & Oncology, National University of Singapore, 119074,
Singapore; 4Departments of Radiology, National University of
Singapore, 119074, Singapore
The purpose of this work was to evaluate the feasibility of quantitative measurement of pharmacokinetic parameters in breast DCE-MRI with direct measurement of AIF, and investigate how the impact of unreliable AIF on the accuracy of these parameters obtained by fitting the Tofts' and adiabatic approximation to the tissue homogeneity (ATH) model. Results in this work showed FA errors on AIF have a more profound influence on the accuracy of pharmacokinetic parameter than that caused by T1 errors. By using an additional surface coil in the breast DCE-MRI, higher SNR on the aorta makes the direct measurement of AIF possible, but careful calibration of FA errors should be made. This work is part of a long term DCE-MRI project of breast tumor.