The goal of this educational seminar is to review the heterogeneous nature of solid tumors and how this complex biology can be addressed by MRI. The relationship between tumor biology, heterogeneity and MRI contrast mechanisms will be discussed. The ability of DCE-MRI and Diffusion MRI to quantify tumor microvascular and structural heterogeneity, respectively, will be reviewed. Given this background, the presentation will then focus on image analysis methods to quantify intra-tumor heterogeneity and multi-parametric methods to classify the intra-tumor tissue components as a means to address the heterogeneous nature of tumors.
Syllabus: Addressing Tumor Heterogeneity by Multi-Parametric MRI
1. Biology of Tumors and Intra-Tumor Heterogeneity
a. Genetic
b. Metabolism and hypoxia
c. Vasculature structure and perfusion
2. Imaging Contrast Mechanisms for Tumor Characterization
a. VEGF role in MRI Contrast of Tumors
b. MR 1H Relaxometry Characteristics of Tumors
c. DCE-MRI to quantify tumor microvascular characteristics
d. Diffusion imaging to assess structural heterogeneity of tumors
3. Analysis Approaches to Address Tumor Heterogeneity
a. Image acquisition considerations
b. Histogram analysis
c. Texture Analysis
d. Multispectral Tissue Classification
i. Background
ii. Classification of tumor tissue populations iii. Characterization of the Therapeutic Target: Viable Tumor 1. Microvasculature by DCE-MR
4. Future Directions