ORIGINAL ARTICLES  RADIOPHARMACOLOGY 

The Quarterly Journal of Nuclear Medicine 2003 September;47(3):171-87

Copyright © 2009 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

language: English

CT imaging of angiogenesis

Lee T. Y. ^{1, 2, 3}, Purdie T. G. ⁴, Stewart E. ^{1, 2}

¹ Imaging Program Lawson Health Research Institute, London, Ontario, Canada 2 Imaging Research Laboratories Robarts Research Institute, London, Ontario, Canada 3 Radiology and Nuclear Medicine Department The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada 4 Clinical Physics, Princess Margaret Hospital, University Health Network, Toronto, Ontatio, Canada

Tumor angio­gen­e­sis has sig­nif­i­cant impli­ca­tions in the diag­no­sis and treat­ment of var­i­ous sol­id ­tumors. With the ­advent of ­fast, mul­ti-­slice CT scan­ners, CT imag­ing tech­niques ­capable of qual­ita­tive and quan­ti­ta­tive anal­y­sis of ­tumor angio­gen­e­sis ­have ­been the sub­ject of exten­sive inves­ti­ga­tion in the ­past 2 ­decades. The fun­da­men­tal bas­es for CT imag­ing of angio­gen­e­sis are ­both the trans­port by ­blood ­flow of intra­ve­nous­ly admin­is­tered iod­i­nat­ed con­trast mate­ri­al to tis­sue and the ­exchange by dif­fu­sion of ­these con­trast mole­cules ­between the intra­vas­cu­lar ­space and the extra­vas­cu­lar inter­sti­tial ­space. With cur­rent ­fast CT scan­ners ­both tis­sue and vas­cu­lar enhance­ment can be meas­ured and ­traced ­over ­time at ­small ­time inter­vals to ­allow ­detailed mod­el­ing of the dis­tri­bu­tion of con­trast ­agent in tis­sue. Both com­part­men­tal and dis­trib­ut­ed param­e­ter mod­els for con­trast trans­port and ­exchange ­have ­been devel­oped to quan­ti­fy ­from the CT ­data the fol­low­ing angio­gen­e­sis relat­ed param­e­ters: tis­sue ­blood ­flow, ­blood vol­ume, ­mean tran­sit ­time, con­trast arri­val ­time, cap­il­lary perme­abil­ity sur­face ­area prod­uct and hepat­ic arte­ri­al frac­tion in ­case of the liv­er. This ­review address­es the fol­low­ing ­aspects of CT imag­ing of angio­gen­sis: 1) ­basic con­cepts relat­ed to the under­stand­ing of ­both com­part­men­tal and dis­trib­ut­ed param­e­ter mod­els; 2) com­par­i­son ­between ­both ­types of mod­els; 3) prac­ti­cal ­issues ­with ­respect to the meas­ure­ment of the arte­ri­al ­input func­tion, ­which is ­required for the solu­tion of ­both ­types of mod­els; and, 4) illus­tra­tion of the appli­ca­tion of a dis­trib­ut­ed param­e­ter mod­el, the Johnson and Wilson mod­el, in a num­ber of experi­men­tal stud­ies.