Pulmonary blood flow quantification in humans from 15O-water PET

The PBF quantification based on <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:mmultiscripts><mml:mrow></mml:mrow> <mml:mrow></mml:mrow> <mml:mn>15</mml:mn></mml:mmultiscripts> </mml:math> O-water PET imaging combined with our automatic VOI selection method is an effective method to produce relatively realistic results. In case of upper lung lobes, the results are likely overestimated if pulmonary vessels are not removed from the VOI. The accurate estimation of the air volume within the lung lobe VOIs is also a non-trivial problem. More research on this topic is warranted to find whether there is a decreasing trend between PBF and age or significant differences between the sexes.