Simultaneous water activation and glucose metabolic rate imaging with PET

A novel imaging and signal separation strategy is proposed to be able to separate [F-18]FDG and multiple [O-15]H2O signals from a simultaneously acquired dynamic PET acquisition of the two tracers. The technique is based on the fact that the dynamics of the two tracers are very distinct. By adopting an appropriate bolus injection strategy and by defining tailored sets of basis functions that model either the FDG or water component, it is possible to separate the FDG and water signal. The basis functions are inspired from the spectral analysis description of dynamic PET studies and are defined as the convolution of estimated generating functions (GFs) with a set of decaying exponential functions. The GFs are estimated from the overall measured head curve, while the decaying exponential functions are pre-determined. In this work, the time activity curves (TACs) are modelled post-reconstruction but the model can be incorporated in a global 4D reconstruction strategy. Extensive PET simulation studies are performed considering single [F-18]FDG and 6 [O-15]H2O bolus injections for a total acquisition time of 75 min. The proposed method is evaluated at multiple noise levels and different parameters were estimated such as [F-18]FDG uptake and blood flow estimated from the [15O]H2O component, requiring a full dynamic analysis of the two components, static images of [F-18]FDG and the water components as well as [O-15]H2O activation. It is shown that the resulting images and parametric values in ROIs are comparable to images obtained from separate imaging, illustrating the feasibility of simultaneous imaging of [F-18]FDG and [O-15]H2O components.