The Assessment of Tumor Cellularity using DSC-MRI

Natenael B. Semmineh¹, Junzhong Xu¹, John C. Gore¹, Christopher C. Quarles¹

The use of DSC-MRI in tumors can be confounded by extravascular T₂* effects that occur when contrast agent leaks out of the vasculature. The resulting DSC-MRI signals are consequently influenced by the extravascular compartmentalization of the contrast agent, but we propose that such effects can be analyzed to extract imaging metrics sensitive to the spatial distribution of tumor cells within tissue (e.g cell density, intercellular distance). Using simulations as well as in vitro and in vivo studies we demonstrate that DSC-MRI tumor data are highly sensitive to tumor cell density.