Hillestad T, Hompland T, Fjeldbo CS, et al. - Researchers described a procedure based on diagnostic dynamic contrast-enhanced (DCE) MRI that reflects a continuous range of hypoxia levels in tumors of cervical cancer patients. Researchers obtained hypoxia images applying an established technique based on a pixel-wise combination of DCE-MRI parameters Ve and Ktrans, representing oxygen consumption and supply, respectively. The two tumor models were applied to develop and confirm an algorithm to retrieve surrogate measures of hypoxia levels from the images by comparing the MRI-defined levels with hypoxia levels reflected in pimonidazole stained histological sections. It was shown that interferon response hallmarks together with HIF1A protein expression by immunohistochemistry seemed significant at the mildest levels. Therefore, this procedure visualizes the distribution of hypoxia levels within patient tumors and has the potential to identify levels of different prognostic and biological significance.