DCE-MRI perfusion analysis suffers from low reliability, especially when 2nd-generation pharmacokinetic models are used to estimate perfusion parameter maps (voxel-by-voxel estimation) in low SNR conditions. These models provide estimates of plasma flow and capillary permeability in addition to the commonly used parameters Ktrans, kep. This contribution presents a method for estimation of perfusion maps using the tissue homogeneity model with incorporated spatial regularization in the form of total variation. The algorithm is based on the proximal minimization methods well established in image reconstruction problems. The use of state-of-the-art minimization and image regularization techniques stabilizes the estimates of perfusion parameter maps and keeps the computational demands low.
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