Effect of tracer arrival time on the estimation of the myocardial perfusion in DCE-CMR

Background An accurate segmental myocardial blood flow (MBF) quantification can be performed by means of signal deconvolution techniques. The accuracy of MBF estimates relies on the precise identification of the tracer arrival time in the myocardium (tOnset). Voxelwise MBF quantification is likely to be more subject to such error than segmental MBF analysis due to the lower signal-to-noise ratio of myocardial signal intensity curves. Automated tOnset detection methods would be therefore warranted. The aim of this study was to assess the importance to of tOnset identification on voxelwise MBF quantification and to describe an automated algorithm to detect the optimal tOnset which minimizes the error in MBF estimates.