CT Perfusion: Principles, Applications and Problems

摘要

The fast scanning speed of current slip-ring CT scanners has enabled the development of perfusion imaging techniques with intravenous injection of contrast medium. In a typical CT perfusion study, contrast medium is injected and rapid scanning at a frequency of 1-2 Hz is used to monitor the first circulation of the injected contrast medium through a 1-2 cm thick slab of tissue. From the acquired time-series of CT images, arteries can be identified within the tissue slab to derive the arterial contrast concentration curve, C_a(t) while each individual voxel produces a tissue residue curve, Q(t) for the corresponding tissue region. Deconvolution between the measured C_a(t) and Q(t) leads to the determination of cerebral blood flow (CBF), cerebral blood volume (CBV) and mean transit time (MTT) in brain studies. In this presentation, an important application of CT perfusion in acute stroke studies - the identification of the ischemic penumbra via the CBF/CBV mismatch and factors affecting the quantitative accuracy of deconvolution, including partial volume averaging, arterial delay and dispersion are discussed.