doi:10.1016/j.medengphy.2023.104092engSainz de Mena, D.Pérez, M. A.García-Aznar, J. M.Exploring the potential of Physics-Informed Neural Networks to extract vascularization data from DCE-MRI in the presence of diffusionART-2024-137454Dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DCE-MRI) is widely used to assess tissue vascularization, particularly in oncological applications. However, the most widely used pharmacokinetic (PK) models do not account for contrast agent (CA) diffusion between neighboring voxels, which can limit the accuracy of the results, especially in cases of heterogeneous tumors. To address this issue, previous works have proposed algorithms that incorporate diffusion phenomena into the formulation. However, these algorithms often face convergence problems due to the ill-posed nature of the problem. In this work, we present a new approach to fitting DCE-MRI data that incorporates CA diffusion by using Physics-Informed Neural Networks (PINNs). PINNs can be trained to fit measured data obtained from DCE-MRI while ensuring the mass conservation equation from the PK model. We compare the performance of PINNs to previous algorithms on different 1D cases inspired by previous works from literature. Results show that PINNs retrieve vascularization parameters more accurately from diffusion-corrected tracer-kinetic models. Furthermore, we demonstrate the robustness of PINNs compared to other traditional algorithms when faced with noisy or incomplete data. Overall, our results suggest that PINNs can be a valuable tool for improving the accuracy of DCE-MRI data analysis, particularly in cases where CA diffusion plays a significant role.2024http://zaguan.unizar.es/record/13227310.1016/j.medengphy.2023.104092http://zaguan.unizar.es/record/132273oai:zaguan.unizar.es:132273info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/AEI/PID2020-113819RB-I00info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/H2020/101018587/EU/Individual and Collective Migration of the Immune Cellular System/ICoMICSThis project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No H2020 101018587-ICoMICSinfo:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/H2020/826494/EU/PRedictive In-silico Multiscale Analytics to support cancer personalized diaGnosis and prognosis, Empowered by imaging biomarkers/PRIMAGEThis project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No H2020 826494-PRIMAGEinfo:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/MCIU/FPU18/04541info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/MICINN-AEI-FEDER/PID2021-122409OB-C21info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/MICINN/PLEC2021-007709/AEI/10.13039/501100011033MEDICAL ENGINEERING & PHYSICS 123 (2024), 104092 [10 pp.]byhttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.esinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess