Convolutional neural network for accelerating the computation of the extended Tofts model in dynamic...

Quantitative physiological parameters can be obtained from nonlinear pharmacokinetic models, such as the extended Tofts (eTofts) model, applied to dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DCE-MRI). However, the computation of such nonlinear models is time consuming. The aim of this study was to develop a convolutional neural network (CNN) for accelerating the computation of fitting eTofts model without sacrificing agreement with conventional nonlinear-least-square (NLLS) fitting. This was a retrospective study, which included 13 patients with brain glioma for training (75%) and validation (25%), and 11 patients (three glioma, four brain metastases, and four lymphoma) for testing. CAIPIRINHA-Dixon-TWIST DCE-MRI and double flip angle T₁ map acquired at 3 T were used. A CNN with both local pathway and global pathway modules was designed to estimate the eTofts model parameters, the volume transfer constant (K^trans ), blood volume fraction (v_p ), and volume fraction of extracellular extravascular space (v_e ), from DCE-MRI data of tumor and normal-appearing voxels. The CNN was trained on mixed dataset consisting of synthetic and patient data. The CNN result and computation speed were compared with NLLS fitting. The robustness to noise variations and generalization to brain metastases and lymphoma data were also evaluated. Statistical tests used were Student's t test on mean absolute error, concordance correlation coefficient (CCC), and normalized root mean squared error. Including global pathway modules in the CNN and training the network with mixed data significantly (p < 0.05) improved the CNN performance. Compared with NLLS fitting, CNN yields an average CCC greater than 0.986 for K^trans , greater than 0.965 for v_p , and greater than 0.948 for v_e . The CNN accelerated computation speed approximately 2000 times compared to NLLS, showed robustness to noise (signal-to-noise ratio >34.42 dB), and had no significant (p > 0.21) difference applied to brain metastases and lymphoma data. In conclusion, the proposed CNN to estimate eTofts parameters showed comparable result as NLLS fitting while significantly reducing the computation time. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: 3 TECHNICAL EFFICACY STAGE: 1.