Sanders Jeremiah W, Chen Henry Szu-Meng, Johnson Jason M, Schomer Donald F, Jimenez Jorge E, Ma Jingfei, Liu Ho-Ling
Department of Imaging Physics, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, USA.
Medical Physics Graduate Program, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center UTHealth Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Houston, Texas, USA.
Magn Reson Med. 2021 Jan;85(1):469-479. doi: 10.1002/mrm.28432. Epub 2020 Jul 29.
Perfusion MRI with gadolinium-based contrast agents is useful for diagnosis and treatment response evaluation of brain tumors. Dynamic susceptibility contrast (DSC) MRI and dynamic contrast enhanced (DCE) MRI are two gadolinium-based contrast agent perfusion imaging techniques that provide complementary information about the tumor vasculature. However, each requires a separate administration of a gadolinium-based contrast agent. The purpose of this retrospective study was to determine the feasibility of synthesizing relative cerebral blood volume (rCBV) maps, as computed from DSC MRI, from DCE MRI of brain tumors.
One hundred nine brain-tumor patients underwent both DCE and DSC MRI. Relative CBV maps were computed from the DSC MRI, and blood plasma volume fraction maps were computed from the DCE MRIs. Conditional generative adversarial networks were developed to synthesize rCBV maps from the DCE MRIs. Tumor-to-white matter ratios were calculated from real rCBV, synthetic rCBV, and plasma volume fraction maps and compared using correlation analysis. Real and synthetic rCBV in white and gray matter regions were also compared.
Pearson correlation analysis showed that both the tumor rCBV and tumor-to-white matter ratios in the synthetic and real rCBV maps were strongly correlated (ρ = 0.87, P < .05 and ρ = 0.86, P < .05, respectively). Tumor plasma volume fraction and real rCBV were not strongly correlated (ρ = 0.47). Bland-Altman analysis showed a mean difference between the synthetic and real rCBV tumor-to-white matter ratios of 0.20 with a 95% confidence interval of ±0.47.
Realistic rCBV maps can be synthesized from DCE MRI and contain quantitative information, enabling robust brain-tumor perfusion imaging of DSC and DCE parameters with a single gadolinium-based contrast agent administration.
使用基于钆的造影剂进行灌注磁共振成像（MRI）对脑肿瘤的诊断及治疗反应评估很有用。动态磁敏感对比（DSC）MRI和动态对比增强（DCE）MRI是两种基于钆的造影剂灌注成像技术，它们能提供关于肿瘤血管系统的互补信息。然而，每种技术都需要单独注射基于钆的造影剂。这项回顾性研究的目的是确定从脑肿瘤的DCE MRI合成DSC MRI计算得出的相对脑血容量（rCBV）图的可行性。
109例脑肿瘤患者接受了DCE和DSC MRI检查。从DSC MRI计算得出相对CBV图，从DCE MRI计算得出血浆体积分数图。开发了条件生成对抗网络以从DCE MRI合成rCBV图。从真实rCBV、合成rCBV和血浆体积分数图计算肿瘤与白质比率，并使用相关性分析进行比较。还比较了白质和灰质区域的真实和合成rCBV。
Pearson相关性分析表明，合成和真实rCBV图中的肿瘤rCBV以及肿瘤与白质比率均呈强相关（分别为ρ = 0.87，P <.05和ρ = 0.86，P <.05）。肿瘤血浆体积分数与真实rCBV没有强相关性（ρ = 0.47）。Bland-Altman分析显示，合成和真实rCBV肿瘤与白质比率之间的平均差异为0.20，95%置信区间为±0.47。
可以从DCE MRI合成逼真的rCBV图，且包含定量信息，通过单次注射基于钆的造影剂就能实现对DSC和DCE参数进行可靠的脑肿瘤灌注成像。
