Estimating Kinetic Parameter Maps From Dynamic Contrast-Enhanced MRI Using Spatial Prior Knowledge

Dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance (DCE-MR) imaging can be used to study microvascular structure in vivo by monitoring the abundance of an injected diffusible contrast agent over time. The resulting spatially resolved intensity-time curves are usually interpreted in terms of kinetic parameters obtained by fitting a pharmacokinetic model to the observed data. Least squares estimates of the highly nonlinear model parameters, however, can...