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Updated: Aug 7, 2026

Dynamic Contrast Enhanced Magnetic Resonance Imaging of an Orthotopic Pancreatic Cancer Mouse Model
Published on: April 18, 2015
Determination of pharmacokinetic parameters in DCE MRI: Consequence of nonlinearity between contrast agent
Melanie Heilmann1, Fabian Kiessling, Marta Enderlin
1Department of Medical Physics in Radiology, German Cancer Research Center (Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum), Heidelberg, Germany. melanie.heilmann@curie.u-psud.fr
Objectives:
We sought to compare pharmacokinetic modeling of dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DCE-MRI) data by assuming a linear and nonlinear relationship between signal intensity (SI) and contrast agent (CA) concentration.
Materials And Methods:
Data sets were generated by computer-based simulation studies and DCE-MRI examination of 5 tumor-bearing mice using a 1.5 T MR-scanner. Two approaches were investigated: a linear and nonlinear relationship between SI and CA concentration before pharmacokinetic analysis. In a pharmacokinetic 2-compartment model, values of exchange rate constant kep and amplitude A were compared for both assumptions.
Results:
In the linear approach, A was as much as 30% less for kep values between 1.0 and 5.0 min, whereas kep was as much as 60% greater, for kep between 0.2 and 5.0 min compared with the nonlinear one, as demonstrated in simulations and animal studies.
Conclusions:
Nonlinearity between SI and CA concentration has to be considered for accurate parameter calculation in DCE-MRI studies.
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