Liver DCE-MR Imaging with a Blood Pool Contrast Agent and Distributed Computing on the European Grid Infrastructure: An Innovative Method for Whole Liver Perfusion Quantification.

Benjamin Leporq¹, Sorina Camarasu-Pop¹, Frank Pilleul¹, Olivier Beuf¹

This study presents a MR acquisition protocol and a processing method using distributed computing on the European Grid Infrastructure (EGI) to allow 3D liver perfusion parametric mapping after DCE-MR imaging with the MS-325 blood pool agent. In this preliminary study, processing speed, reproducibility and accuracy were assessed. The presented method allows 3D liver perfusion quantification in a reasonable processing time, suitable for clinical study in a research context. While the distributed processing method was validated compared to ROI-based quantification, such fully automatic processing requires higher image quality which is now achievable on the latest 3T MRI systems available.