Investigating the use of arterial spin labeling perfusion as a substitute to DCE-MRI in primary tumor perfusion of nasopharyngeal carcinoma

Assessment of perfusion is important in tumor diagnosis, stage and therapeutic effect evaluation. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between arterial spin labeling (ASL) (with PLD=1.0, 1.5 and 2.0s) and DCE-MRI parameters of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). Two observers measured the tumor blood flow (TBF) by ASL and DCE derived parameters including MaxSlop, CER, IAUGC, Ktrans, Kep and Ve. TBF showed moderate to strong correlations between all three TBF and DCE-MRI parameters except between all TBF with Ve and between TBF of PLD1.5s and CER. ASL is a feasible non-invasive tool in NPC to quantitatively assess the perfusion.