Heterogeneous Enhancement Pattern in DCE-MRI Reveals the Morphology of Normal Lymph Nodes: An Experimental Study

Figure 1

Precontrast (a), early (b), and late (c) enhancement of DCE-MRI images acquired, respectively, before 80 and 800 seconds after the administration of Gd-BOPTA and after a motion correction procedure. The lymph nodes are indicated by red arrows. Unsaturated fat T1-weighted images (same slice as (a)–(c)) before (d) and about 50 minutes after (e) the administration of the contrast agent, i.e., after the acquisition of the DCE-MRI scan; (f) is the same as (e) after a nonlinear motion correction procedure. Green arrows indicate a large displacement of the left node from (d) to (e) that was not fully recovered in (f) and consequently was excluded from the successive analysis. Frames (d)–(f) also show that a fatty hilum is not present. The white strip indicated by the violet arrow is a vial filled by gadolinium solution used as a standard signal in all DCE-MRI sequences.

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