1: Magn Reson Med. 2006 Nov;56(5):1041-9.

Determination of the maturity and functionality of tumor vasculature by MRI:
correlation between BOLD-MRI and DCE-MRI using P792 in experimental fibrosarcoma 
tumors.

Baudelet C, Cron GO, Gallez B.

Laboratory of Biomedical Magnetic Resonance, Université Catholique de Louvain,
Brussels, Belgium.

Using hypercapnia and carbogen as functional markers of vessel maturation and
function, we compared blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) contrast with standard 
dynamic contrast-enhanced (DCE)-MRI quantitative parameters in murine
fibrosarcoma. Our results show that there was no correlation between vessel
maturity and contrast-agent uptake rate (K(in) (Trans)) or contrast agent efflux 
rate (k(ep)). In addition, DCE-MRI provided higher estimates of the fraction of
functional tumor compared to BOLD-MRI. The two putative markers of regional
vascular density, i.e., the magnitude of BOLD signal change during carbogen
challenge (VF) and the fractional plasma volume found by DCE-MRI (V(p)), were
only weakly correlated (r(2) = 0.02-0.14). Furthermore, VF showed no correlation 
with K(in) (Trans). A positive correlation was observed (r(2) = 0.75) between
mean tumor VF and k(ep), but only when averaged over the whole tumor (which
includes tumor regions completely unperfused by the gadolinium (Gd) contrast
agent). This would merely reveal a relationship between perfusion status and the 
capacity to respond to carbogen breathing. In conclusion, characterizations of
tumor microvasculature imaging using BOLD-MRI and DCE-MRI appear to be largely
complementary, given the weak correlations between their corresponding derived
parameters. (c) 2006 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

PMID: 16986109 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

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