quantification of myocardial blood flow with 11 c-hydroxyephedrine dynamic pet: comparison with 15 o-h 2 o pet

11c-hydroxyephedrine (hed) pet has been used to evaluate the myocardial sympathetic nervous system (sns). here we sought to establish a simultaneous approach for quantifying both myocardial blood flow (mbf) and the sns from a single hed pet scan. ten controls and 13 patients with suspected cardiac disease were enrolled. the inflow rate of 11c-hed (k1) was obtained using a one-tissue-compartment model. we compared this rate with the mbf derived from 15o-h2o pet. in the controls, the relationship between k1 from 11c-hed pet and the mbf from 15o-h2o pet was linked by the renkin-crone model. the relationship between k1 from 11c-hed pet and the mbf from 15o-h2o pet from the controls’ data was approximated as follows: k1  =  (1 − 0.891 * exp(− 0.146/mbf)) * mbf. in the validation set, the correlation coefficient demonstrated a significantly high relationship for both the whole left ventricle (r = 0.95, p < 0.001) and three coronary territories (left anterior descending artery: r = 0.96, left circumflex artery: r = 0.81, right coronary artery: r =  0.86; p < 0.001, respectively). 11c-hed can simultaneously estimate mbf and sympathetic nervous function without requiring an additional mbf scan for assessing mismatch areas between mbf and sns.