Extraction of the first bolus passage in dynamic susceptibility contrast perfusion measurements

Object The processing of dynamic susceptibility contrast perfusion measurements requires an extraction of the first bolus passage of the injected contrast agent. State-of-the-art methods employ the fit of a gamma variate function to the measured data. The use of a gamma variate function is motivated by its shape similarity to the expected relaxation rate time-course during the first bolus passage. However, the quality of this result is strongly influenced by the amount of overlap of the first and second bolus passage. In this work we present an alternative, data-driven method for the extraction of the first bolus passage from a measured relaxation time-course.