Feasibility and Reproducibility of Ventilation and Perfusion Imaging at a 0.35 T MR-Linac in Healthy Volunteers and Lung Cancer Patients

Hybrid MR-imaging and linear accelerators for radiotherapy allow highly accurate treatment of lung cancer patients. The potential of Non-uniform Fourier Decomposition (NuFD), a non-contrast enhanced free-breathing technique that allows the assessment of lung ventilation and perfusion, was investigated in 10 healthy subjects and 2 lung cancer patients at a 0.35 T MR-Linac. Due to challenging ventilation quantification and reproducibility, two normalization strategies were proposed. Evaluation on repeated scans demonstrated clear improvement compared to uncorrected cases. First longitudinal ventilation assessment over treatment course shows promising results for the use of NuFD as treatment response monitoring tool in the clinical workflow.