Simulation study investigating the role of vessel topology in differentiating normal and tumor vessels using transverse relaxation times

Brain vasculature is conventionally represented as 2D or 3D straight cylinders when simulating BOLD contrast effects in fMRI. In reality, the vasculature is more complicated with branching and coiling especially in tumors. In this study, we introduce a simple cylinder fork model to reflect the curvature of vessels and performed simulations to study the effect of the cylinder fork bifurcation angle on the transverse relaxation times at different vessel diameters. This model clearly showed a dependence of the bifurcation angle on the relaxation times which could potentially be used as a tool to differentiate between normal and tumor vessels.

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