Yonggang Lu1,
Jacobus F.A. Jansen2, Yousef Mazaheri1, Hilda E.
Stambuk3, Amita Shukla-Dave1
1Medical
Physics Department, Memorial Sloan-kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY,
United States; 2Radiology Department, Maastricht University,
Maastricht, Netherlands; 3Radiology Department, Memorial
Sloan-kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, United States
This study proposes optimal model mapping to characterize tumor microcirculation with diffusion weighted imaging in head and neck cancer. At each voxel within tumor tissue, an optimal model was determined to quantify tumor microcirculation from several common diffusion models based on the Bayesian Information Criterion. For individual tumors, voxel percentage for each model and the optimal model map were generated. The results were promising in characterizing the heterogeneity of tumor microcirculation. Future studies with large cohort of patients need to assess the use of this method in clinical applications such as tumor diagnosis, staging and treatment monitoring.