The Importance of Time-of-Flight Reconstruction and Point Spread Modeling in the Measurement of Myocardial Blood Flow Parameters.

Recent publications have demonstrated that time-of-flight reconstruction can have an impact on the amount of spillover between the blood pool ROI and the myocardial regions. This may necessitate changes to kinetic models; however, these changes if implemented correctly may result in improved accuracy and reproducibility of blood flow estimates. This may also have the benefit of assessing blood flow in the microvasculature using newer F-18 labeled blood flow tracers. Time of flight and point spread function modeling represent significant improvements in the accuracy and quality of reconstructed myocardial perfusion PET images. This may also have significant implications for the reliability of blood flow estimates. To achieve these benefits, attention must be given to blood flow models to ensure that they have been correctly optimized for the scanner-specific time-of-flight reconstruction properties.