Omar El-Sherif1, Robert Stodilka1,2, Benoit Lewden1, Michael Jerosch-Herold3, Terry Thompson1,2, Frank Prato1,2
1University of Western Ontario - Lawson Health Research Institute, London, Ontario, Canada; 2Diagnostic Radiology, St. Joseph's Health Care, London, Ontario, Canada; 3Radiology, Brigham & Women's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA
We introduce a novel contrast enhanced perfusion analysis method maximum likelihood deconvolution (MLD) to estimate myocardial blood flow. MLD is designed to overcome difficulties that arise due to noise without compromising accuracy. MLD is evaluated using computer simulations and clinically in three volunteers. Simulation and clinical tests demonstrated that MLD is numerically stable and accurately estimates perfusion at clinical contrast:noise levels for cardiac perfusion values. MLD models dispersion of the contrast agent between the arterial and tissue curves, which is not usually accounted for by standard deconvolution analysis.