Prostate DCE-MRI with a 16-Channel Surface Array and Endorectal Coil Using Slice Oversampling and SENSE to Minimize Blood Inflow Effect

Introduction: The reliability of pharmacokinetic (PK) parameters derived from DCE-MRI using approaches such as the Generalized Kinetic Model (GKM) depends on the accuracy of the measured arterial input function (AIF). For prostate studies, the best AIF locations are the femoral arteries which are susceptible to a large inflow effect which shortens the apparent blood T1 and results in inconsistent contrast agent concentration. One way to solve this problem is using a prepolarization slab applied superior to the imaging volume, but the additional pulse increases SAR. In this work, we achieve the same result by exciting a thicker volume and using slice oversampling with SENSE to maintain the same data size and temporal resolution.