Quantitative cerebral blood flow measurements using N-isopropyl-(iodine 123) p-iodoamphetamine and single photon emission computed tomography with rotating gamma camera.

Sixty regional cerebral blood flow measurements were performed on 4 normal volunteers, 7 epileptics, and 40 cerebrovascular disorders using intravenously injected N-isopropyl-(I-123)p-iodoamphetamine (123I-IMP) and single photon emission computed tomography with rotating gamma camera. Arterial blood sampling was combined for obtaining absolute blood flow values. The brain activity distributions of the tomographic image from 30 min after injection, when brain activity reached a plateau, were corrected to represent 5-min reference values with the use of the monitored entire brain's time-activity curve. Brain mean blood flow values ranged from 54 to 63, 34 to 59, and 20 to 60 ml/100 g/min, in normal volunteers, epileptics, and subjects with cerebrovascular disorders, respectively. Brain mean 123I-IMP uptake corrected for injection dose did not correlate with these absolute flow values. This quantitative method is especially useful for diagnosing diffuse flow reductions, which were observed in 8 (14%) of 56 studies in the patients.