Abstract: Disclosed are approaches to non-invasively characterize a tumor or other lesion in a region of interest (ROI) based on various analyses of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data. The MRI data may correspond to ultrafast dynamic contrast enhanced MRI (DCE-MRI) and high spatial resolution DCE-MRI scans, and diffusion-weighted MRI (DW-MRI) scans of the ROI. Vasculature metrics may be determined, and tumor-associated blood flow velocity and/or tumor interstitial pressure may be obtained using the vasculature metrics as inputs to a computational fluid dynamics model. A combination of morphological vascular metrics and functional vascular metrics may be used to characterize the tumor. Malignancy, aggressiveness, treatment response, and other features of tumors or other lesions, in the breast or other regions of a patient, may be characterized through disclosed analyses of MRI data.

Abstract: Disclosed are approaches to non-invasively characterize a tumor or other lesion in a region of interest (ROI) based on various analyses of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data. The MRI data may correspond to ultrafast dynamic contrast enhanced MRI (DCE-MRI) and high spatial resolution DCE-MRI scans, and diffusion-weighted MRI (DW-MRI) scans of the ROI. Vasculature metrics may be determined, and tumor-associated blood flow velocity and/or tumor interstitial pressure may be obtained using the vasculature metrics as inputs to a computational fluid dynamics model. A combination of morphological vascular metrics and functional vascular metrics may be used to characterize the tumor. Malignancy, aggressiveness, treatment response, and other features of tumors or other lesions, in the breast or other regions of a patient, may be characterized through disclosed analyses of MRI data.

Abstract: A method for electronically removing a lesion from a three-dimensional (3D) medical image includes segmenting each two-dimensional (2D) slice of a sequence of 2D slices of the 3D medical image to identify the lesion within any one or more of the 2D slices. The method includes deleting the lesion from each 2D slice in which the lesion was identified to create a sequence of lesion-deleted slices. The method includes constructing, based on the sequence of lesion-deleted slices, a lesion-deleted intensity-based projection image, such as a lesion-deleted maximum-intensity projection image. Advantageously, the method improves the accuracy of background parenchymal enhancement (BPE) by excluding high-intensity voxels that indicate the presence of a lesion, and thus are not indicative of BPE.