Document Type : Full Research Paper
Authors
1 Assistant Professor, Dept. of Physics, Imam Khomeni University
2 M.Sc Student, Dept. of Physics, Payam-Noor Mashhad
3 Assistant Professor, Nuclear Science and Technology Research Institue (NSTRI), Reactors and Accelerators Research and Development School
4 Control and Intelligent Processing Center of Excellence, Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of Tehran School of Cognitive Science, Institute For Studies In Theoretical Physics and Mathematics (IPM) Image Analysis Laboratory, Radiology Department, Henry Ford Health Ssystem, Detroit USA
Abstract
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a non-ionizing method for identification and evaluation of soft tissue lesions. Perfusion MRI evaluates soft tissues by measuring changes in magnetization of water molecules due to a contrast agent. To this end, concentration curves in the plasma and tissue are estimated by MRI and effective longitudinal relaxation time (T1eff) of the tissue was calculated. To interpret the results, the effects of water exchange on the effective longitudinal relaxation time should be studied. This work presents such a study in which the equations of two- and three-compartmental models of rat brain tissue are solved using Hion and Runge-Kutta numerical methods for different input functions and simulated by Monte Carlo method. Since the exchange of water and contrast agent among different tissue compartments is a diffusion phenomenon, Monte Carlo method is applicable. Results of the numerical methods were compared with those of Monte Carlo simulation. The results of the two methods were almost identical with a maximum relative difference of less than 1%. In this work, concentration of contrast agent in plasma is estimated from MRI of a rat brain tissue. This data is used in the Monte Carlo method to obtain T1eff and exchange rate constants. An advantage of our method is that T1eff is obtained from real data and not from the curve fitting method as commonly used. We derive concentration of contrast agent as a function of time in extravascular space for different constants (K). Then, the curves of simulated and real data were compared to obtain the exchange rate constant of each compartment. The results showed that K of an abnormal tissue was larger than that of the normal tissues. As such, this parameter may be used for diagnosis and treatment of the soft tissue diseases.
Keywords
- Magnetic resonance imaging
- Numerical method
- statistical method
- Longitudinal Relaxation Time
- Multi Compartmental Tissue Models
Main Subjects