Claire Foottit1, Greg O. Cron1,
Jean Francois Mercier1, Viviane Thanh-Van Nguyen2, Ian
Cameron1, Mark E. Schweitzer1, John Sinclair1,
John Woulfe1, Matthew J. Hogan3, Thanh B. Nguyen1
1The Ottawa Hospital,
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada; 2University of Montreal; 3Neuroradiology,
The University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
In DCE-MRI studies of human brain tumors, a suitable artery for the arterial input function (AIF) is often not available or is insufficiently large. The venous output function (VOF) in the superior sagittal sinus is often used as a surrogate AIF. However, to our knowledge no DCE-MRI study has ever validated this practice for high-temporal-resolution data. In this work, we acquired phase-derived AIFs and VOFs simultaneously during DCE-MRI studies, with the hypothesis that tumor tracer kinetic parameters would be equivalent using either vascular function. The data support the use of a VOF in place of the AIF.