Evaluation of time of flight (TOF) and point spread function (PSF) reconstructions in the quantification of myocardial blood flow with 13N ammonia and PET: Comparison among reconstructions (reprojection, OSEM), software (PMOD and CARIMAS) and operators

Myocardial blood flow quantification with PET and 13NH3 is a well established technique to evaluate the coronary flow reserve in patient with different cardiomyopathies. We performed an in depth evaluation of the variation in the results when modifying the reconstruction technique (OSEM algorithms, analytical algorithms, OSEM algorithms including time of flight and point spread function modelling), when using different two different software implementing the same kinetic model (PMOD and CARIMAS) and we also evaluated the inter-operator variabilities with 2 operators.