Lost in quantification…: The influence of different software packages on flow quantification measures

Excerpt

Over the last decades, non-invasive myocardial perfusion imaging has shown major improvements and has consolidated its role as a mainstay for the workup of coronary artery disease.1 While the most often applied technique for myocardial perfusion imaging is still single-photon emission tomography (SPECT) imaging, positron emission tomography (PET) for myocardial perfusion imaging has gained growing importance and acceptance in clinical routine. Reasons for that development are—besides the persisting intermittent shortage of Technetium-99m—technical advantages such as reliable tracer uptake quantification, higher count sensitivity, higher temporal and spatial resolution of PET.2 Furthermore, PET myocardial perfusion imaging gets along with a substantially lower radiation exposure to the patient due to different physical properties of PET radiotracers such as shorter half-life.3 Last not least, the probably most important advantage of PET myocardial perfusion imaging is the potential for absolute quantification of myocardial blood flow, a technique which has first been described in the 80s.4 The superior extraction fraction of PET perfusion tracers compared to Technetium-99m-labeled SPECT agents and the calculation of absolute measures of myocardial blood flow also are main reasons for the superior diagnostic accuracy of PET over SPECT.5‐7 …