Construction and characterization of an arterial input function measurement system for dynamic PET

BACKGROUND: Dynamic positron emission tomography is an under utilized clinical technique. It requires knowledge of the time-course activity concentration in the patient's arterial blood, called arterial input function (AIF), normally acquired via arterial blood sampling. Alternative methods to acquire the AIF do exist, but each has its own limitations. This study presents a non-invasive radiation detector, called Radian-PET, designed to measure the AIF non-invasively. METHODS: Ga injections were used to simulate the AIF. RESULTS: > 0.96) for all scans. CONCLUSIONS: Radian-PET can accurately measure clinically relevant activity concentrations and detect quickly changing activity levels like those used to perform kinetic analysis. Further work is required to increase detector efficiency and reduce sources of noise.