Intramyocardial capillary blood volume estimated by whole-body CT: validation by micro-CT

Abstract

Fast CT has shown that myocardial perfusion (F) is related to myocardial intramuscular blood volume (Bv) as Bv=A*F+B*F^1/2 where A,B are constant coefficients. The goal of this study was to estimate the range of diameters of the vessels that are represented by the A*F term. Pigs were placed in an Electron Beam CT (EBCT) scanner for a perfusion CT scan sequence over 40 seconds after an IV contrast agent injection. Intramyocardial blood volume (Bv) and flow (F) were calculated in a region of the myocardium perfused by the LAD. Coefficients A and B were estimated over the range of F=1-5ml/g/min. After the CT scan, the LAD was injected with Microfil^(R) contrast agent following which the myocardium was scanned by micro-CT at 20μm, 4μm and 2.5 μm cubic voxel resolutions. The Bv of the intramyocardial vessels was calculated for diameter ranges d=0-5, 5-10, 10-15, 15-20μm, etc. EBCT-derived data were presented so that it could be directly compared the micro-CT data. The results indicated that the blood in vessels less than 10μm in lumen diameter occupied 0.27-0.42 of total intravascular blood volume, which is in good agreement with EBCT-based values 0.28-0.48 (R² =0.96). We conclude that whole-body CT image data obtained during the passage of a bolus of IV contrast agent can provide a measure of the intramyocardial intracapillary blood volume.