Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Magnetic Resonance Imaging Of Breast Cancer Brain Metastasis Progression And Responses To Radiotherapy, Donna H. Murrell

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Introduction: The incidence of brain metastasis due to breast cancer is increasing and prognosis is poor. Treatment is challenging for this disease because systemic therapy has limited efficacy due to the presence of the blood-brain barrier. In addition, it is thought that disseminated dormant cancer cells persist in metastatic organs and may evade treatment, thereby facilitating a mechanism for later recurrence. Methods: In this thesis, we use contrast-enhanced MRI and high resolution anatomical MRI to characterize blood-brain barrier integrity associated with the development of brain metastases due to HER2+ breast cancer in the SUM-190-BR3, JIMT-1-BR3, and MDA-MB-231-BR-HER2 experimental models. We …

Non-Invasive Imaging For The Assessment Of Cardiac Dose And Function Following Focused External Beam Irradiation, Omar El-Sherif

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Technological advances in imaging and radiotherapy have led to significant improvement in the survival rate of breast cancer patients. However, a larger proportion of patients are now exhibiting the less understood, latent effects of incidental cardiac irradiation that occurs during left-sided breast radiotherapy. Here, we examine the utility of four-dimensional computed tomography (4D-CT) for the accurate assessment of cardiac dose; and a hybrid positron emission tomography (PET) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system to longitudinally study radiation-induced cardiac effects in a canine model.

Using 4D-CT and deformable dose accumulation, we assessed the variation caused by breathing motion in the estimated dose …