Mahesh Bharath Keerthivasan1,2, Jean-Philippe Galons2, Diego Martin3, Ali Bilgin2,3,4, and Maria Altbach2
1Siemens Medical Solutions USA Inc, New York, NY, United States, 2Medical Imaging, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, United States, 3Biomedical Engineering, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, United States, 4Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, United States
1Siemens Medical Solutions USA Inc, New York, NY, United States, 2Medical Imaging, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, United States, 3Biomedical Engineering, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, United States, 4Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, United States
Slice profile corrected two-component signal model
allows accurate T2 estimation for neoplasms affected by partial volume effects.
Figure 4: Scatter
plot of T2 estimates from 21 neoplasms. (A) T2 estimation
from the gProCo (which
does not take into account each component’s slice profile) underestimates the
T2 for the two hemangiomas from the subjects in Figure 3 (arrows).
These two lesions fall within the range of malignancies (red box) determined
from malignancies without PV. (B) The csProCo corrected
signal
model gives good separation between the hemangiomas and malignant lesions.
Note that the two hemangiomas (arrows) now fall in the expected range of benign
lesions.
Figure 3: (A) T2-weighted images from
RADTSE-VFA for three subjects where the imaging slice was chosen to be at the
edge of the lesion, thereby affected by partial volume. (B) The gProCo model
under-estimates the hemangiomas whereas the csProCo, which
takes into account individual slice profiles
for liver and lesion, yields T2 estimates that match the expected T2 of the
lesion (based on T2 values in the center of the slice, where PV is minimized).