Grant: Operating Grant

Pharmacokinetic modeling is used to characterize the environment of tumours. First, images are acquired using either magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or positron emission tomography (PET), a compound detectable by these imaging modalities is injected to the subject and images are acquired as a function of time following the injection. Pharmacokinetic models analyze these images and extract information about the blood volume, the perfusion of tumours, the "leakiness" of the blood vessels and so on. Some of these measures are used in the clinic to help diagnose which tumour will respond to which treatment. However, we intend to validate that the values found by the pharmacokinetic models are truly representative of the tumour micro-environment, as we have reasons to believe that although these values are influenced by the micro-environment, the models and the acquisition protocols could be improved to provide more physiologically meaningful values. We thus propose a series of experiments on a controlled system that will also be simulated using fluid dynamics theory. This will serve as a benchmark onto which the measures will be calibrated. We will then optimize the data acquisition protocol of MRI in order to best match the results in the control system. Then, we will combine the models used in MRI and in PET such that the quality of the information obtained by both imaging modalities one after the other will both be improved. Many clinical systems are being developed to perform MRI and PET simultaneously, our work will provide a solid base for the analysis of these novel data.