Measurement of cerebral blood flow with a bolus of oxygen-15-labelled water: comparison of dynamic and integral methods.

A method is presented for the measurement of cerebral blood flow (CBF) with a bolus of water labelled with oxygen 15. The method, which has been evaluated in normal volunteers, is based on Kety's model, with two additional parameters to account for the difference in the time of tracer arrival in the radial and carotid arteries ("delay") and for dispersion of the tracer in the body and/or blood counting systems. It combines the advantages of: (i) dynamic data collection for estimation of delay and dispersion; (ii) robustness and linearity of CBF estimates with an integral method; and (iii) simplicity of continuous external monitoring of arterial blood radioactivity, particularly with repeated measurements. An optimized protocol is proposed for routine applications in neurological and neurophysiological studies.