Kinetic modeling of 3'-deoxy-3'-18F-fluorothymidine for quantitative cell proliferation imaging in subcutaneous tumor models in mice.

Unlabelled: 3'-Deoxy-3'-(18)F-fluorothymidine ((18)F-FLT) is a thymidine analog that was developed for measuring tumor proliferation with PET. The aim of this study was to establish a kinetic modeling analysis method for quantitative (18)F-FLT PET studies in subcutaneous tumor models in mice.

Methods: To explore the validity of an image-derived left ventricular input function, we measured equilibrium constants for plasma and whole blood and metabolite fractions in blood after (18)F-FLT injection.