Influence of scan duration on dynamic contrast -enhanced magnetic resonance imaging pharmacokinetic parameters for brain lesions

Objective: Gadolinium-based contrast agent needs time to leak into the extravascular-extracellular space, leak back into the vascular space, and reach an equilibrium state. For this reason, acquisition times of <10 min may cause inaccurate estimation of pharmacokinetic parameters. Since no studies have been conducted on the in-fluence of long scan times on DCE-MRI parameters in brain tumors, the aim of this study is to investigate the variation of DCE-MRI-derived kinetic parameters as a function of acquisition time, from 5 to 10 min in brain tumors.Materials and methods: Fifty-two patients with histologically confirmed brain tumors were enrolled in this retrospective study, and examination at 3 T, DCE-MRI, with scan duration of 10 min, was used for retrospective generation of 6 sets of quantitative DCE-MRI maps (K-trans, V-e and K-ep) from 5 to 10 min. Features were extracted from the DCE-MRI maps in contrast enhancement (CE) volumes. Kruskal-Wallis with post-hoc correction and coefficient of variation (CoV) were used as statistical test to compare DCE-MRI maps obtained from 6 data sets. Significance: p < 0.05.Results: No differences in K-trans features in CE volumes between different scan durations. V-e , K-ep features in CE volumes were influenced by different data length. The highest number of significantly different Ve and Kep features in CE volumes were between 5 min and 10 min (p < 0.013), 5 min and 9 min (p < 0.044), 6 min and 10 min (p < 0.040). CoV of K-ep was reduced from 5 min to 10 min, going from highly variable (CoV = 0.70) to mildly variable (CoV = 0.42).Conclusion: K-ep and V-e were time-dependent in brain tumors, so a longer scan time is needed to obtain reliable parameter values. K-trans was found to be time-independent, as it remains the same in all 6 acquisition times and is the only reliable parameter with short acquisition times.

Automated summary

The aim of this study was to investigate the variation of DCE-MRI-derived kinetic parameters in brain tumors as a function of acquisition time. The results showed that K-ep and V-e were time-dependent and required longer scan times to obtain reliable parameter values, while K-trans was time-independent and remained the same in all acquisition times, making it a reliable parameter for short acquisition times.