  Intratumor heterogeneity is often manifested by vascular compartments with
distinct pharmacokinetics that cannot be resolved directly by in vivo dynamic
imaging. We developed tissue-specific compartment modeling (TSCM), an
unsupervised computational method of deconvolving dynamic imaging series from
heterogeneous tumors that can improve vascular phenotyping in many biological
contexts. Applying TSCM to dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI of breast cancers
revealed characteristic intratumor vascular heterogeneity and therapeutic
responses that were otherwise undetectable.
