Gated Parametric Images using 82Rubidium Cardiac PET for More Accurate Measurements of Ejection Fraction

One crucial measure of heart function is how well it can pump blood from its ventricles, referred to as the ejection fraction (EF). One method of estimating the EF in Cardiac PET is to segment the myocardium of a ventricle on static gated images and compute the difference of the inner volume of the segmentation at end diastole and systole, relative to the volume at end diastole. However, because radiotracer signal in Cardiac PET is much higher in the myocardium of the left ventricle (LV) than the right ventricle (RV), current day imaging software typically only segments the LV and computes the LV ejection fraction (LVEF), thereby making RVEF estimates inaccessible. One method of improving LVEF and RVEF estimations is to acquire cardiac-gated dynamic images and perform kinetic modeling to yield parametric images of blood flow and blood volume of the LV and RV cavities. In this manner, LV and RV blood volumes can be directly estimated throughout the cardiac cycle and enable more accurate measures of both LV and RV EF….

Faculty Supervisor:

Robert DeKemp

Student:

Partner:

Jubilant Radiopharma

Discipline:

Computer science

Sector:

Professional, scientific and technical services

University:

University of Ottawa

Program: