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

Publication date: Available online 2 October 2018

Source: European Journal of Radiology

Author(s): Meng Lin, Yu Xiaoduo, Dehong Luo, Han Ouyang, Lizhi Xie, Wu Bing, Chunwu Zhou

Abstract

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^trans, K_ep and V_e 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 (expect V_e) 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.

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