European journal of nuclear medicine
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Comparative Study Clinical Trial
An alternative approach to estimation of the brain perfusion index for measurement of cerebral blood flow using technetium-99m compounds.
Cerebral blood flow (CBF) has been quantified non-invasively using the brain perfusion index (BPI) determined from radionuclide angiographic data generated by technetium-99m hexamethylpropylene amine oxime( )((99m)Tc-HMPAO) or technetium-99m ethyl cysteinate dimer( )((99m)Tc-ECD). The BPI is generally calculated using graphical analysis (GA). In the present study, BPI was measured using spectral analysis (SA), and its usefulness evaluated in comparison with GA. ⋯ Although both BPI(S) and BPI(G) values correlated significantly with the CBF(IMP) values, the correlation coefficient in BPI(S) was always better than that in BPI(G) (r=0.869 for (99m)Tc-HMPAO and r=0.929 for (99m)Tc-ECD in BPI(S), r=0.629 for (99m)Tc-HMPAO and r=0.856 for (99m)Tc-ECD in BPI(G)). These results suggest that SA can provide a more reliable BPI for quantifying CBF using (99m)Tc-HMPAO or (99m)Tc-ECD than the conventional method using GA. Our method will be useful especially when using a tracer with a low first-pass extraction fraction and/or when performing activation studies using pharmacological intervention.