DCE-MRI RESEARCH
Image Analysis is supporting the use of MRI and DCE-MRI in clinical practice and clinical research. Our research projects aim for a better utilisation of recent technological development and innovation in
-
rheumatic diseases,
-
osteoarthritis,
-
immunology and
-
oncology.
DCE-MRI has become increasingly important in both research and clinical studies aiming at measuring the magnitude and spread of inflammation in rheumatoid arthritis studies, tumors condition in breast or brain cancer studies, degree of perfusion in cardiac images.
DCE-MRI measures the changes in the rate of relaxation of water, proportional to the concentrations of the contrast agent (usually Gd-DTPA) and allows the evaluation of functional changes in cross-sectional images down to a pixel-by-pixel level. DCE-MRI provides non-invasive physiological information relevant for contrast agent distribution and tissue perfusion. Measurements of the tissue’s vascularity allow a trained radiologist to make conclusions on a patient's condition and disease progression.
When trying to assess the extent of inflammation caused by inflammatory diseases, radiologists can take up to one hour to read and evaluate a sequence of up to 300 separate images. Each image in the sequence has small intensity differences, representing relative uptake of a contrast agent in the affected tissue. Interpreting this large amount of data is done manually, which is a complex, time-consuming and - although undertaken by experienced radiologists - highly subjective method. The role of quantitative image analysis and fully automated techniques such as inflammation maps (iMAPs) in the evaluation of drug therapy and patient diagnosis is steadily increasing. This is driven by attempts to reduce the time and cost of the trials and eliminate significant intra- and inter-observer variability around the measurements obtained from manual analysis of large MRI datasets.
We support R&D projects and RCT with the most advanced software solutions for DCE-MRI and MRI data analysis.
Contact us to receive a free trial version of the software.