Lauren Jean Bains1,2, Josephine H. Naish1,2,
David L. Buckley3
1Imaging Sciences Research
Group, University of Manchester, Manchester, Greater Manchester, United Kingdom;
2Biomedical Imaging Institute, Manchester, Greater Manchester,
United Kingdom; 3Division of Medical Physics, University of Leeds,
Leeds, United Kingdom
In this study, a T1 weighted dynamic contrast enhanced (DCE) MRI acquisition with two bolus injections and two flip angles (30 and 5) was used to create a DCE timecourse with varying sensitivity to water exchange. The results from using a two compartment model of tracer kinetics incorporating water exchange effects (the WX-2CXM) to fit these data showed that the low flip angle portion of the timecourse had significantly greater sensitivity to water exchange than the 30 portion. The acquisition was sufficiently sensitive to water exchange to provide preliminary estimates of the residence times of water in three tissue compartments.