Myocardial blood flow quantitation with the novel F-18 Flurpiridaz PET imaging tr

Coronary artery disease continues to be a major contributor to the cause of death in the United States. The ability to diagnosis CAD in patients at an early stage has improved over the years resulting in reducing the mortality rate. In nuclear medicine/cardiology, the SPECT and PET myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI) methods and radiopharmaceuticals used clinically over the past 10 years have offered acceptable results for accuracy and diagnosis but have now reached their limit for improvement. This researchproject will use an exciting new PET MPI tracer called F-18 flurpiridaz which is currently half way through phase III FDA clinical trials. This new PET tracer offers higher spatial and contrast resolution over SPECT MPI and offers higher temporal resolution and longer half life over current PET tracers making it the ideal MPI tracer for the evaluation of patients with suspected CAD. The long-term objective of this SBIR grant is to develop a quantitative method for the relative and absolute quantitation of