Investigating the correlation of arterial spin labeling and dynamic contrast enhanced perfusion in primary tumor of nasopharyngeal carcinoma.

PURPOSE

This prospective study aimed to investigate the correlation between two perfusion methods: arterial spin labeling (ASL) and dynamic contrast enhanced (DCE) technique in patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) and to optimize ASL protocol.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Forty-five newly diagnosed NPC patients underwent MR examinations with both 3D pseudo-continuous ASL (pCASL) and DCE-MRI sequences. Tumor blood flow (TBF) derived in pCASL with three post-labeling delay (PLD) times (i.e. 1.0 s, 1.5 s, and 2.0 s) and DCE derived parameters including MaxSlop, contrast enhancement ratio (CER), Initial area under the gadolinium curve (IAUGC), K, K and V were measured by two independent observers, and their correlation coefficients were investigated using Spearman test.

RESULTS

Inter-observer reproducibility (ICC = 0.931-0.998) was observed to be excellent. Positive correlations between mean, maximum and minimum value of TBFs with different PLDs and DCE-MRI parameters (except V) were respectively observed (r = 0.308-0.688, P = 0.000-0.040).

CONCLUSION

pCASL may be an alternative method for DCE-MRI in assessing the perfusion level in NPC in the future.