Determination of regional myocardial blood flow by 82Rb PET imaging

The purpose of this project is to improve calculation of myocardial blood flow (MBF) in 82Rb PET imaging using the wavelets temporal smoothing. 12 normal volunteers were imaged at rest, with 2220 MBq of 82Rb each. A GE Advance PET system was used to acquire studies. MBF was calculated with a 2-compartmental model. The same set of images was analyzed twice in order to investigate repeatability. The results show high repeatability for global MBF with a value of 5.2%. For regional and average MBF, the repeatability was in the range of 27.9% for Apex Lateral area to 2.6% MID Sep-A area, which are marginal to good repeatability values. (author)