Cardiac PET/CT with Rb-82: optimization of image acquisition and reconstruction parameters

Our aim was to characterize the influence of time-of-flight (TOF) and point spread function (PSF) recovery corrections, as well as ordered subset expectation maximization (OSEM) reconstruction parameters, in (82)Rb PET/CT quantification of myocardial blood flow (MBF) and myocardial flow reserve (MFR). Rest and stress list-mode dynamic (82)Rb PET acquisition data from 10 patients without myocardial flow defects and 10 patients with myocardial blood flow defects were reconstructed retrospectively. OSEM reconstructions were performed with Gaussian filters of 4, 6, and 8 mm, different iterations, and subset numbers (2 × 24; 2 × 16; 3 × 16; 4 × 16). Rest and stress global, regional, and segmental MBF and MFR were computed from time activity curves with FlowQuant(©) software. Left ventricular segmentation using the 17-segment American Heart Association model was obtained.