Figure 1.

Overview of the structure of the digital reference object (DRO) for simulation of breast dynamic contrast enhanced (DCE) MRI. The DRO is split into four modules, each of which manages different aspects of the simulation. The Anatomy Module contains functions for setting up and managing the appearance and behavior of the tissues to be simulated. A simulation may contain more than one class of tissue, for example water- and fat-based tissues. Interactions between tissues, as well as responses common to all tissues such as the vascular input function, are managed by the Physiology Module. Parameters related to the MRI scan settings to be simulated are managed by the MRI system Module. These inputs are provided to the Simulator Module that then generates the final simulated k-space data.