Evaluation of diffusion MRI-based cytometry imagine based on Spearman's correlation analysis

Motivation: DMRI-based cytometry methods have emerged for in-vivo microstructural imaging, however, it is difficult to evaluate accuracy of fitted results in clinic due to lack of ground-truth. Goal(s): To quantitative evaluate accuracy of results through correlation analysis. Approach: IMPULSED fitting and Spearman's correlation analysis on dMRI data from 90 patients with malignant breast cancer. numerical simulations Results: Strong correlation metrics between IMPULSED-derived microstructural parameters and measured ADC values can be used to evaluate the accuracy of model fitting, such as the metric of νin vs. ADCPGSE , which is higher to indicate lower fitted errors. Impact: Evaluation for accuracy of emerging dMRI-based cytometry methods is limited by the lack of ground-truth, such as pathologic staining results. This prospective study demonstrated clinical potential of evaluating accuracy of imaging results through correlation analysis in the absence of ground-truth.