Quantitation of Myocardial Perfusion using 15OWater PET: From a Research Tool to Clinical Routine

The application of 15O-water for cardiac PET perfusion imaging was one of the main goals when this tracer was developed. However, the development of a method from basic research to routine tool in clinical work takes a long time. With the case of cardiac 15O-water PET it took 22-27 years from the initial plans to clinically accepted tool. This is likely not unusual as the validation of new method and demonstrating the clinical impact requires many studies and a long time. Eventually, the method has been now included in the European clinical guidelines of chronic coronary syndromes as an accepted clinical tool. This paper illustrates the development of the cardiac 15O-water PET at Turku PET Centre, one of the pioneers in developing the method from bench to bedside. Despite the current success, there are still many open issues, which warrant further development and studies.