A short ¹⁸F-FDG imaging window triple injection neuroimaging protocol for parametric mapping in PET

Area of Science:

• Nuclear medicine
• Radiochemistry
• Neuroimaging

Background:

• Parametric PET kinetic modeling is limited by long scan times and arterial input function (AIF) requirements.
• Standard clinical practice rarely utilizes parametric PET due to these constraints.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a rapid 24-minute triple injection 18F-FDG PET protocol for brain imaging.
• To enable noninvasive estimation of the arterial input function (AIF) using a standard field of view PET scanner.

Main Methods:

• A novel 24-minute triple injection 18F-FDG PET protocol was designed for brain imaging.
• The protocol utilized a region of interest over the left ventricle for AIF modeling.
• Validation involved comparing modeled AIF and kinetic parameters against a 36-minute window in 6 healthy participants.

Main Results:

• The modeled AIF showed a 9% mean area under the curve error compared to the validation AIF.
• Voxel-wise correlation for net influx rate ([Formula: see text]) between the short and validation windows exceeded 0.95.

Conclusions:

• The 24-minute triple injection protocol facilitates parametric 18F-FDG neuroimaging.
• Noninvasive AIF estimation from cardiac images is achievable with standard PET scanners.