Motion Correction and Its Impact on Absolute Myocardial Blood Flow Measures with PET

Motion artifacts, due to cardiac and respiratory cycles, myocardial cardiac creep, or gross patient movements, have been extensively investigated in the context of relative myocardial perfusion imaging with SPECT and PET. These movements have been identified as a major source of errors in image quantification and diagnosis. Recently, as dynamic PET quantification for myocardial blood flow assessment has entered clinical practice, similar questions have arisen on the impact of motion on final blood flow values.

While preliminary investigations have underlined the potential impact of these motions on MBF quantification, their correction on dynamic acquisition remains challenging and limited to research studies. Gross patient's body movements occur in a consistent number of cases, particularly during stress acquisition, typically involving a limited number of image frames. If undetected, these movements can lead to great differences in flow values and consequently misdiagnosis. Quality control routines can be applied to automatically inspect the shape of time activity curves and to help identify motion artifacts. Cyclic cardiac and respiratory motion may have a considerable impact on final flow values. Correction of gross body motion represents a priority in the context of optimizing absolute flow clinical routine utilization and protocol standardization.