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Time-dependent diffusivity and kurtosis in phantoms and head and neck cancer patients

Published

Author(s)

Eddy Soloman, Stephen Russek, Sungheon Gene Kim

Abstract

Purpose: To assess the reliability of measuring diffusivity, diffusional kurtosis and cellular-interstitial water exchange time with long diffusion times (100-800 ms) using stimulated-echo diffusion-weighted imaging. Methods: Time-dependent diffusion MRI (dMRI) was tested on two well-established diffusion phantoms and in five patients with head and neck cancer. Measurements were conducted using an in-house diffusion-weighted STEAM-EPI pulse sequence with multiple diffusion times at a fixed echo time on three scanners. We used the weighted linear least-squares fit method to estimate time-dependent diffusivity, () and diffusional kurtosis,(). Additionally, the Kärger model (KM) was used to estimate cellular-interstitial water exchange time (). Results: Diffusivity measured by time-dependent STEAM-EPI measurements and commercial SE-EPI showed comparable results with R2 of above 0.98 and overall 5.4±3.0% deviation across diffusion times without noticeable trends. Diffusional kurtosis phantom data showed expected patterns: constant and = 0 for negative controls and slow varying and for samples made of nanoscopic vesicles. Time-dependent dMRI in head and neck cancer patients found that KM could be considered valid in about 72% of the voxels in the metastatic lymph nodes. The median cellular-interstitial water exchange time estimated for lesions was between 58.5 and 70.6 ms. Conclusion: Based on two well-established diffusion phantoms, we found that timedependent dMRI measurements can provide stable diffusion and kurtosis values over a wide range of diffusion times and across multiple MRI systems. Moreover, estimation of cellular-interstitial water exchange time can be achieved using KM for the metastatic lymph nodes in head and neck cancer patients.
Citation
Magnetic Resonance in Medicine

Citation

Soloman, E. , Russek, S. and Kim, S. (2022), Time-dependent diffusivity and kurtosis in phantoms and head and neck cancer patients, Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (Accessed July 5, 2025)

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Created October 11, 2022, Updated June 13, 2025
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