Quantitative Total-Body Imaging of Blood Flow with High Temporal Resolution Early Dynamic 18F-Fluorodeoxyglucose PET Kinetic Modeling

Abstract

Quantitative total-body PET imaging of blood flow can be performed with freely diffusible flow radiotracers such as ¹⁵O-water and ¹¹C-butanol, but their short half-lives necessitate close access to a cyclotron. Past efforts to measure blood flow with the widely available radiotracer ¹⁸F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) were limited to tissues with high ¹⁸F-FDG extraction fraction. In this study, we developed an early-dynamic ¹⁸F-FDG PET method with high temporal resolution kinetic modeling to assess total-body blood flow based on deriving the vascular transit time of ¹⁸F-FDG and conducted a pilot comparison study against a ¹¹C-butanol reference.