Abstract

Purpose: To investigate the agreement on perfusion parameters derived from two different commercially available solutions for dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DCE-MRI) in patients with prostate cancer (PCa). Methods: A total of 50 patients (mean age, 71.6; range 56–86) who had undergone radical prostatectomy between December 2021 and September 2022 were included in this retrospective study. All patients had undergone DCE-MRI on a single 3T-MR scanner. Tumor segmentation on MR images was performed by two radiologists in consensus after radiologic-pathologic correlation using topographic maps as a reference standard. Subsequently, four perfusion parameters were calculated by dedicated commercially available solutions from two different vendors. Both solutions adopted a population-based arterial input function and an extended Tofts model as the pharmacokinetic model. The perfusion parameters were as follows; volume transfer constant (Ktrans), rate constant (kep), volume fraction of extravascular extracellular space (ve), and volume fraction of plasma (vp). The differences between paired measurements were compared by Bland–Altman analyses and the reproducibility was evaluated using the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC). Results: The study population consisted of Gleason score (GS) 6 (n = 12), GS 7 (n = 34), GS 8 (n = 1), and GS 9 (n = 3). Significant differences were found for all parameters (p < 0.0001). Mean differences were as follows: Ktrans, −0.2102 (95% confidence interval; −0.2687 to −0.1518); kep, −0.7632 (−0.9005 to −0.6258); ve, −0.1507 (−0.2422 to −0.05907); vp, −0.02929 (−0.03383 to −0.02476). ICCs for average measures were as follows: Ktrans, 0.2989 (−0.2355 to 0.6021); kep, 0.6883 (0.4507 to 0.8231); ve, −0.1331 (−0.9967 to 0.3570); vp, 0.2653 (−0.3106 to 0.5881). Conclusion: All perfusion parameters were significantly different between the two solutions. Therefore, comparison of perfusion parameters across different solutions is not recommended.

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