Heat Modulation of Intrinsic MR Contrasts for Tumor Characterization

(1) Background: The longitudinal relaxation time (T₁), transverse relaxation time (T₂), water proton chemical shift (CS), and apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) are MR quantities that change with temperature. In this work, we investigate heat-induced intrinsic MR contrast types to add salient information to conventional MR imaging to improve tumor characterization. (2) Methods: Imaging tests were performed in vivo using different rat tumor models. The rats were cooled/heated to steady-state temperatures from 26-36 °C and quantitative measurements of T₁, T₂, and ADC were obtained. Temperature maps were measured using the proton resonance frequency shift (PRFS) method during the heating and cooling cycles. (3) Results: All tissue samples show repeatable relaxation parameter measurement over a range of 26-36 °C. Most notably, we observed a more than 3.3% change in T₁/°C in breast adenocarcinoma tumors compared to a 1% change in benign breast fibroadenoma lesions. In addition, we note distinct values of T₂/°C change for rat prostate carcinoma cells compared to benign tissue. (4) Conclusion: These findings suggest the possibility of improving MR imaging visualization and characterization of tissue with heat-induced contrast types. Specifically, these results suggest that the temporal thermal responses of heat-sensitive MR imaging contrast mechanisms in different tissue types contain information for improved (i) characterization of tumor/tissue boundaries for diagnostic and therapy purposes, and (ii) characterization of salient behavior of tissues, e.g., malignant versus benign tumors.