Patent ID: 7715901

Claim:
A method for on-line functional clinical guidance or monitoring and follow-up of treatment progression of a therapeutic modality, optionally during an operation, involving treatment by a blood-borne or interstitial sensitizer using Blood Oxygenation Level-Dependent (BOLD)-magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) wherein said sensitizer, upon excitation by the appropriate sensitizing radiation, initiates local oxygen consumption or depletion thereby inducing a change in BOLD contrast, said method comprising: (i) generating a BOLD-weighted MR-image of the target region of interest within the patient's body (time t 0 ); (ii) administering said sensitizer to the patient; (iii) irradiating the target region of interest within the patient's body with the appropriate sensitizing radiation thereby inducing a change in BOLD contrast, while the patient is placed in the magnetic field of an MRI spectrometer and is subjected to continuous MR imaging; (iv) recording said change in BOLD contrast by generating a sole or a plurality of T2* weighted sequential BOLD MR-images during and/or after irradiation (time t); (v) processing the data generated at time t 0 and time t and generating a BOLD-contrast color-coded difference or ratio map on a pixel by pixel basis; and (vi) analyzing the processed data by displaying a composite image obtained by superimposing the BOLD-contrast map generated in (v) on the image generated in (i), wherein areas in said composite image, which show a BOLD contrast effect should coincide with areas treated with said therapeutic modality, thereby providing on line information on said treatment progression.