On the simultaneous fitting for tracer delay and dispersion in cerebral blood flow studies using oxygen-15 water and PET

Simulations were used to evaluate the feasibility of simultaneous estimation of CBF, partition coefficient, tracer delay and dispersion in the one-compartment CBF model by curve fitting. The accuracy and precision of these estimates were investigated by means of sensitivity functions. Despite the considerable variability (up to 50%) in the /spl Delta/t and /spl tau/ estimates, estimates of CBF were within 5% of their true values.