Non-invasive quantification of cerebral blood flow for rats by micropet imaging of o labelled water: the application of a cardiac time-activity curve for the tracer arterial input function

In-vivo quantitative cerebral blood flow (CBF) measurement using positron emission tomography (PET) has typically employed invasive arterial blood sampling procedure to determine the arterial input function (AIF). The present study was performed to provide a non-invasive quantitative CBF measurement technique for rats using a dedicated animal PET.