Dynamic contrast-enhanced CT of head and neck tumors: Perfusion measurements using a distributed-parameter tracer kinetic model

Functional imaging has the potential to be a practical and widely available method of studying the pathphysiology of disease using modern CT technologies. With the high temporal resolution achievable by these technologies, a two-compartment distributed-parameter model, which more accurately represents the tracer concentration within the vascular space, was applied on five patients’ data with extracranial head and neck tumors. The parametric maps successfully generated were more informative than the current commercial software packages and the commonly used lumped-parameter compartmental models.