Nina Tunariu1, Michael Germuska1,
Veronica A. Morgan1, Sharon Giles1, Catherine Simpkin1,
Timothy Yap2, James A. d'Arcy1, David J. Collins1,
Nandita M. de Souza1
1Clinical MRI Unit, Royal
Marsden Hospital, Institute of Cancer Research & EPSRC Cancer Imaging
Centre, Sutton, Surrey, United Kingdom; 2Drug Development Unit,
Royal Marsden Hospital & Institute of Cancer Research, Sutton, Surrey,
United Kingdom
A multiparametric protocol combining Dynamic Contrast Enhanced (DCE) and Diffusion Weighted (DW) MRI would potentially provide better characterisation of tumor response. Employing the same ROI would allow a more accurate cross-correlation between functional MRI parameters and reduce analysis time. This study explores the impact on transfer constant (Ktrans) values of ROIs drawn on the pre-contrast T1weighted, early DCE-MRI subtraction and DW-MRI images. The choice of tumor ROI delineation did not influence median Ktrans reproducibility. However, the absolute Ktrans values varied significantly between the three methods because of the extent to which the high vascularity tumor rim was included in the measurement.