Standard compartmental models for quantitative dynamic contrast enhanced MRI (DCE-MRI) typically assume active delivery of contrast agent that is instantaneously distributed within the extravascular extracellular space within each imaging voxel. The goal of this study is to determine the error accumulated in the estimated pharmacokinetic parameters when these assumptions are not satisfied. Using finite element methods to model contrast agent arrival and diffusion throughout realistic tissue domains (obtained from histological stains of tissue sections from a murine cancer model), it was rigorously determined that parameterization error is highest in regions of low vascularity, and lowest in well-perfused regions.
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