Assessment of Cerebral Blood Flow, Volume, and Mean Transit Time from Bolus-Tracking MRI Images: Theory and Practice - Advance Image Processing in Magnetic Resonance Imaging - page 586

19.3.5 C ONCLUSION

DSC-MRI is becoming a fundamental tool for noninvasive quantitative assess-
ment of cerebral functions and is regarded as a potential alternative to PET, which
still is the gold standard for quantitative imaging. In fact, DSC-MRI, thanks to
its minimal invasiveness and good spatial and temporal resolution characteristics,
is increasingly being used to generate quantitative parametric maps of physio-
logical processes related to brain function. Different from PET, conversion of
MRI signals into measurement of physiological parameters is a less-developed
field and only in recent years increasing attention has been paid to develop a
methodology for correct quantification of DSC-MRI images. Numerous studies
have already shown that CBF, CBV, and MTT quantifications from DSC-MRI
images are possible, and the results obtained show DSC-MIR to be an extremely
promising quantitative technique. However, further work is necessary to ade-
quately address the problems highlighted in this chapter and to bring the robust-
ness required in clinical applications.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank Dr. Mirco Cosottini, Department of Neuroscience, University of Pisa,
Pisa, Italy, and Dr. Gianluigi Pillonetto, Department of Information Engineering,
University of Padova, Padova, Italy, for helpful discussions and contributions.
This work was supported by NIH Grant EB-01975.

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