  Cardiac 18F-FDG PET has been used in clinics to assess myocardial glucose
metabolism. Its ability for imaging myocardial glucose transport, however, has
rarely been exploited in clinics. Using the dynamic FDG-PET scans of ten
patients with coronary artery disease, we investigate in this paper appropriate
dynamic scan and kinetic modeling protocols for efficient quantification of
myocardial glucose transport. Three kinetic models and the effect of scan
duration were evaluated by using statistical fit quality, assessing the impact
on kinetic quantification, and analyzing the practical identifiability. The
results show that the kinetic model selection depends on the scan duration. The
reversible two-tissue model was needed for a one-hour dynamic scan. The
irreversible two-tissue model was optimal for a scan duration of around 10-15
minutes. If the scan duration was shortened to 2-3 minutes, a one-tissue model
was the most appropriate. For global quantification of myocardial glucose
transport, we demonstrated that an early dynamic scan with a duration of 10-15
minutes and irreversible kinetic modeling was comparable to the full one-hour
scan with reversible kinetic modeling. Myocardial glucose transport
quantification provides an additional physiological parameter on top of the
existing assessment of glucose metabolism and has the potential to enable
single tracer multiparametric imaging in the myocardium.
