title: Modelling approach for separating blood time-activity curves in positron emission tomographic studies.
abstract: A modelling approach is developed to generate the full time course of an injected radiotracer and its labelled metabolites in plasma/blood, based on measurements of the total radioactivities in withdrawn plasma/blood samples. A compartmental model is used to describe the conversion of an injected tracer to its metabolites in the body. The model equation is formulated with the total radioactivity concentration curve as the input function. The utility and characteristics of the approach in quantitative positron emission tomographic (PET) studies are shown with two examples. In the first example, using the tracer 6-[18F]fluoro-L-dopa (FDOPA), the approach is shown to derive the full time course of plasma FDOPA and its metabolites. In the second example of dynamic 15O oxygen PET, the approach is used to solve a deconvolution problem to give separated time-activity curves of 15O oxygen and 15O water in blood. The modelling approach improves the separation of blood/plasma time-activity curves and leads to better quantitative interpretation of PET results.
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiological Sciences, UCLA School of Medicine, University of California 90024.
authors.forename: S C
authors.initials: SC
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.forename: J R
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Barrio
authors.forename: D C
authors.initials: DC
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Grafton
authors.forename: W P
authors.initials: WP
authors.lastname: Melega
authors.forename: J M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Hoffman
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Satyamurthy
authors.forename: J C
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Mazziotta
authors.forename: M E
authors.initials: ME
authors.lastname: Phelps
mesh_terms: D004295:Dihydroxyphenylalanine / Q000031:analogs & derivatives* / Q000097:blood; D005462:Fluorine Radioisotopes / Q000097:blood*; D006801:Humans; D010104:Oxygen Radioisotopes / Q000097:blood*; D013997:Time Factors; D014055:Tomography, Emission-Computed
chemical_list: D005462:Fluorine Radioisotopes; D010104:Oxygen Radioisotopes; C043437:fluorodopa F 18; D004295:Dihydroxyphenylalanine