Measurement of Myocardial Blood Flow with PET Using 1-11C-Acetate

11C-acetate has been used extensively for the noninvasive as-sessment of myocardial oxygen consumption and viability with PET. The use of early uptake of acetate by the heart to measure myocardial perfusion has been proposed. This study evaluated the application of 11C-acetate for absolute measurement of myocardial blood flow using a simple compartmental model that does not require blood sampling. Methods: Eight healthy vol-unteers and 13 subjects with concentric left ventricular hyper-trophy were studied under resting conditions with both 11C-acetate and 15O-water. Myocardial blood flow with 11C-acetate was obtained by fitting the first 3 min of the blood and tissue tracer activity curves to a two-compartment model. Flows ob-tained were compared with a validated approach using 15O-water. Results: In healthy volunteers, regional myocardial per-fusion at rest estimated with 11C-acetate was comparable wit