Patent ID: 8194963

Claim:
A method for performing pharmacokinetic analysis in medical image data, comprising: administering a dose of contrast agent (CA) into a subject; acquiring a sequence of medical images of the subject at set temporal intervals, the medical image data being one of: magnetic resonance (MR) image data, computed tomography (CT) data, and ultrasound image data; describing the time-based behavior of concentrations of CA within the subject for each voxel of each medical image of the sequence of medical images based on a reference voxel using a compartmental model for pharmacokinetic analysis that is based on a set of compartmental model parameters; solving the compartmental model for each of the compartmental model parameters; and using the solution for the compartmental model parameters to estimate one or more parameters of physiological significance, wherein using the solution for the compartmental model parameters to estimate one or more parameters of physiological significance includes assuming a value of maximum enhancement is equal to the total dose of the contrast agent administered to the subject.