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Updated: Dec 12, 2025
High-Resolution Cardiac Positron Emission Tomography/Computed Tomography for Small Animals
Published on: December 16, 2022
Selection of PET Camera and Implications on the Reliability and Accuracy of Absolute Myocardial Blood Flow
Ran Klein1,2, Robert A deKemp3,4
1Division of Nuclear Medicine, Department of Medicine, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada.
Purpose Of Review:
PET scanner design and performance evaluation has been driven historically by the imaging requirements for whole-body imaging in oncology. Cardiac PET imaging for accurate quantification of myocardial blood flow (MBF) using short-lived tracers such as rubidium-82 imposes additional requirements for wide dynamic range and high count-rate accuracy. This paper examines the technical challenges encountered in cardiac imaging of myocardial perfusion and blood flow quantification.
Recent Findings:
The newest PET-CT scanners using digital silicon photomultiplier technology have high absolute sensitivity (4-20%) and time-of-flight resolution (3-7 cm) which further improves image quality. The concept of "integral" noise equivalent counts (iNEC) is introduced to compare scanner count-rate performance over the wide dynamic range encountered in MBF imaging with rubidium-82. The latest-generation digital PET scanners with wide axial field-of-view and enhanced time-of-flight resolution should enable accurate quantification of MBF, without any compromise in the quality of conventional ECG-gated myocardial perfusion images.
