Quantification of myocardial blood flow with dynamic perfusion 3.0 Tesla MRI: Validation with ¹⁵o-water PET

Background To develop and validate a method for quantifying myocardial blood flow (MBF) using dynamic perfusion magnetic resonance imaging (MBF_MRI) at 3.0 Tesla (T) and compare the findings with those of ¹⁵O-water positron emission tomography (MBF_PET). Methods Twenty healthy Male volunteers underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and ¹⁵O-water positron emission tomography (PET) at rest and during adenosine triphosphate infusion. The single-tissue compartment model was used to estimate the inflow rate constant (K1). We estimated the extraction fraction of Gd-DTPA using K1 and MBF values obtained from ¹⁵O-water PET for the first 10 subjects. For validation, we calculated MBF_MRI values for the remaining 10 subjects and compared them with the MBF_PET values_. In addition, we compared MBF_MRI values of 10 patients with coronary artery disease with those of healthy subjects. Results The mean resting and stress MBF_MRI values were 0.76±0.10 and 3.04±0.82 mL/min/g, respectively, and showed excellent correlation with the mean MBF_PET values (r=0.96, P<0.01). The mean stress MBF_MRI value was significantly lower for the patients (1.92±0.37) than for the healthy subjects (P<0.001). Conclusion The use of dynamic perfusion MRI at 3T is useful for estimating MBF and can be applied for patients with coronary artery disease. J. Magn. Reson. Imaging 2015;42:754-762.