Comparison of Pharmacokinetic Models for Quantification of Blood-Brain-Barrier Opening Induced by Focused Ultrasound

Abstract

This paper focuses on quantification of blood-brainbarrier(BBB) opening induced by focused ultrasound. Dynamiccontrast-enhanced MRI (DCE-MRI) with two different pharmacokineticmodels, 2CX and ETK, is used to evaluate BBB opening.The ETK model is commonly used in BBB-opening studies. Wepropose use of a more advanced model, 2CX, that provides moreaccurate estimation of the BBB permeability. The accuracy of themodels is compared using simulated and real data. The resultsdemonstrate similar performance of the 2CX and ETK models inthe brain region with a highly permeable BBB, but the ETK hasproven unable to correctly detect low level of permeabilization.Thus, the 2CX model is more suitable for the studies of BBBpermeabilitydynamics.