MURINE TUMOR DIFFUSION AND pO
2
EXPERIMENTS 71
4.1.1. Abstract
Water diffusion-coefficient mapping was used in conjunction with
19
F inversion-recoveryecho-planar imaging (IR-EPI) of a sequestered perfluorocarbon (PFC) emulsion toinvestigate the spatial correlation between the diffusion coefficient of water and the tissueoxygen tension (
p
O
2
) in radiation-induced fibrosarcoma (RIF-1) tumors (n = 11). Thediffusion-time-dependent apparent diffusion coefficient,
D
(
t
), was determined byacquiring diffusion coefficient maps at 20 different diffusion times. Maps at fourrepresentative time points in different regions of the
D
(
t
) curve were selected for finalanalysis. An intravenously administered PFC emulsion, perfluoro-15-crown-5-ether, wasused to generate the
p
O
2
maps.
D
(
t
) and
p
O
2
data were acquired with the animalbreathing either air or carbogen (95% O
2
– 5% CO
2
) to investigate the effects of increased tumor
p
O
2
on
D
(
t
). The average increase in tumor
p
O
2
was 22 torr when thebreathing gas was changed from air to carbogen. Correlating plots generated from pixeldata for
D
(
t
)(air breathing) versus
D
(
t
)(carbogen breathing) showed little deviation froma slope of unity. Correlation plots of
D
(
t
) versus
p
O
2
indicate that no correlation ispresent between these two parameters. This study also confirms that necrotic tissue wasbest differentiated from viable tumor tissue based on
D
(
t
) maps at long diffusion times.
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