Parametric imaging of myocardial blood flow with 15O-water and PET using the basis function method

Regional myocardial blood flow (MBF) can be measured with 15O-water and PET using the 1-tissue-compartment model with perfusable tissue fraction, which provides an MBF value that is free from the partial-volume effect. Studies with 15O-water have several advantages, such as the ability to repeat a scan. How-ever, because of the short scanning time and the small distri-bution volume of 15O-water in the myocardium, the image qual-ity of 15O-water is limited, impeding the computation of MBF and perfusable tissue fraction at the voxel level. We imple-mented the basis function method for generating parametric images of MBF, perfusable tissue fraction, and arterial blood volume (Va) with 15O-water and PET. The basis function method linearizes the solution of the 1-tissue-compartment model, which results in a computationally much faster method than the conventional nonlinear least-squares fitting method in estimat