Distribution of intravascular and extravascular extracellular volume fractions for neovascularization assessment by dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging

Abstract

This study proposes and investigates the distribution of intravascular and extravascular extracellular volume fractions (DIEEF) as a noninvasive biomarker for neovascularization assessment by DCE-MRI. Two estimation methods without knowing the artery input function are developed. The mean square error of DIEEF estimate in the presence of noise and incomplete data is analyzed. Simulation result shows that DIEEF can be accurately estimated even when signal to noise ratio is as low as 5 dB. Tested on a model of atherosclerotic rabbits, DIEEF of aorta plaques is positively correlated with the histological neovessel count with correlation coefficient of 0.940 and P-value of 0.017 and outperforms six existing semiquantitative parameters.