ABSTRACT
Although PETs routine clinical use is mainly for diagnosis, staging and response monitoring in oncology using 18F-FDG, it is also a powerful tool for measuring (patho)physiology in vivo by studying the time-dependent behavior of radiopharmaceuticals. Depending on the tracer, tracer kinetic modelling of dynamic PET data can provide us with functional parameters such as perfusion, metabolism, internalization, receptor and transporter availability, enzyme activity, etc. This chapter discusses the use of compartment models to describe tracer kinetics. First, a general overview of compartment models and the acquisition of arterial plasma input functions and tissue time-activity curves is given. Then, the single-tissue and two-tissue irreversible and reversible compartment models used for measuring blood flow, metabolism and receptor kinetics, respectively, are discussed in more detail. This includes the use of reference tissue models, avoiding the need for arterial sampling. Linearizations of compartment models, such Patlak and Logan graphical analysis and basis function implementations, can be used for rapid voxel-wise tracer kinetic analysis, resulting in parametric images showing the outcome parameters at the voxel level. Finally, further simplification using standardized uptake values is discussed. The chapter ends with a short introduction to the use of quantitative PET in drug development.
