Fig. 2. Schematic illustration of the assessment of myocardial blood flow by positron emission tomography. Images of left ventricular myocardium (A-a ) and blood pool (A-b ) were generated using factor analysis and were used as anatomic references; an overlay of both images was used to control the proper calculation of the factorial images (A-c ). Regions of interest were drawn on basal to midventricular short-axis slices (excluding the septum) to obtain time–activity curves of myocardial tissue (B ), and within the base of the left ventricle, to obtain arterial blood time–activity curves as input function (C ). Arterial and myocardial tissue time–activity curves are then fit to a validated, single-tissue compartment model, resulting in the absolute quantification of myocardial blood flow (D ). For details, see Materials and Methods: H215O PET. ANT = anterior; LAT = lateral; INF = inferior; SEP = septal.
