Background. The present study determines the feasibility of generating an average arterial input function (Avg-AIF) from a limited population of patients with neck nodal metastases to be used for pharmacokinetic modeling of dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI (DCE-MRI) data in clinical trials of larger populations. Methods. Twenty patients (mean age 50 years [range 27-77 years]) with neck nodal metastases underwent pretreatment DCE-MRI studies with a temporal resolution of 3.75 to 7.5 sec on a 1.5T clinical MRI scanner. Eleven individual AIFs (Ind-AIFs) met the criteria of expected enhancement pattern and were used to generate Avg-AIF. Tofts model was used to calculate pharmacokinetic DCE-MRI parameters. Bland-Altman plots and paired Student t-tests were used to describe significant differences between the pharmacokinetic parameters obtained from individual and average AIFs. Results. Ind-AIFs obtained from eleven patients were used to calculate the Avg-AIF. No overall significant difference (bias) was observed for the transfer constant (Ktrans) measured with Ind-AIFs compared to Avg-AIF (p = 0.20 for region-of-interest (ROI) analysis and p = 0.18 for histogram median analysis). Similarly, no overall significant difference was observed for interstitial fluid space volume fraction (ve) measured with Ind-AIFs compared to Avg-AIF (p = 0.48 for ROI analysis and p = 0.93 for histogram median analysis). However, the Bland-Altman plot suggests that as Ktransincreases, the Ind-AIF estimates tend to become proportionally higher than the Avg-AIF estimates. Conclusion. We found no statistically significant overall bias in Ktransor ve estimates derived from Avg-AIF, generated from a limited population, as compared with Ind-AIFs. However, further study is needed to determine whether calibration is needed across the range of Ktrans. The Avg-AIF obtained from a limited population may be used for pharmacokinetic modeling of DCE-MRI data in larger population studies with neck nodal metastases. Further validation of the Avg-AIF approach with a larger population and in multiple regions is desirable.
CITATION STYLE
Shukla-Dave, A., Lee, N., Stambuk, H., Wang, Y., Huang, W., Thaler, H. T., … Koutcher, J. A. (2009). Average arterial input function for quantitative dynamic contrast enhanced magnetic resonance imaging of neck nodal metastases. BMC Medical Physics, 9(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/1756-6649-9-4
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