Dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI has been proven to be a valuable technique in cancer imaging. The poorly formed and leaky vessels formed during angiogenesis to supply tumors facilitate an increased uptake of intravenously administered contrast agents in comparison to normal vasculature. The use of mathematical modeling techniques on the change in tumor signal intensity as a function of time provi...

INTRODUCTION The use of a pre-contrast reference image, referred to as a mask, to suppress background signal and improve output contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) through subtraction is common in contrast-enhanced MR angiography. It is critical that this operation be performed to optimize output image quality. As has been previously reported [1-3] it is advantageous to use complex subtraction for th...