Noninvasive estimation of the arterial input function in positron emission tomography imaging of cerebral blood flow.
Positron emission tomography (PET) with (15)O-labeled water can provide reliable measurement of cerebral blood flow (CBF). Quantification of CBF requires knowledge of the arterial input function (AIF), which is usually provided by arterial blood sampling. However, arterial sampling is invasive. Moreover, the blood generally is sampled at the wrist, which does not perfectly represent the AIF of the brain, because of the effects of delay and dispersion. We developed and validated a new noninvasive method to obtain the AIF directly by PET imaging of the internal carotid artery in a region of interest (ROI) defined by coregistered high-resolution magnetic resonance angiography. An ROI centered at the petrous portion of the internal carotid artery was defined, and the AIF was estimated simultaneously with whole brain blood flow. The image-derived AIF (IDAIF) method was validated against conventional arterial sampling. The IDAIF generated highly reproducible CBF estimations, generally in good agreement with the conventional technique.
Department of Radiology, Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology, Washington University School of Medicine, St Louis, MO, USA. suy@mir.wustl.edu
Yi
Y
Su
Ana M
AM
Arbelaez
Tammie L S
TL
Benzinger
Abraham Z
AZ
Snyder
Andrei G
AG
Vlassenko
Mark A
MA
Mintun
Marcus E
ME
Raichle
D000328:Adult; D002343:Carotid Artery, Internal / Q000502:physiology*; D002560:Cerebrovascular Circulation; D003627:Data Interpretation, Statistical; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D018810:Magnetic Resonance Angiography / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male; D049268:Positron-Emission Tomography / Q000379:methods*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results