Keith Wachowicz1,2, B. Gino Fallone2,3
1Medical Physics,
Department of Oncology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada; 2Medical
Physics, Cross Cancer Institute, Alberta Health Services, Edmonton, Alberta,
Canada; 3Departments of Physics & Oncology, University of
Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
This work explores the use of multi-exponential decomposition on transverse relaxation decay in patients with gliomas, and its potential for assisting in the contouring process for dose prescription, tracking response to therapy, and possibly differentiating from different heterogeneous tumour regions. 3D multi-echo patient data sets were acquired and analysed with a non-negative least squares algorithm for decomposition. Results suggest that elevation of T2 in some localized tumour regions may be more than just a shift to a longer mono-exponential decay, but possibly a shift to a more complicated distribution.