Quantitative pulmonary perfusion can be derived from MR imaging with injection of contrast agent (CA). Tracer-kinetic theory yields physiological parameters such as pulmonary blood flow (PBF), blood volume (PBV) and mean transit time (MTT) but relies on accurate calculation of CA concentration. Previous studies have used ‘subtraction’ or ‘normalisation’ methods without T1-mapping. Using both simulations and data from interstitial lung disease patients, we demonstrate how the ‘subtraction’ method weights PBV by local lung density. This causes likely spurious correlations with hyperpolarised 129Xe biomarkers linked to lung ventilation, microstructure and density, potentially obscuring information of diagnostic interest.
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Tibiletti et al. (2024) studied this question.
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