Myocardial blood flow assessment with SPECT systems: The renovation continues

Excerpt

The incremental prognostic value of myocardial blood flow (MBF) and coronary flow reserve (CFR) by PET/CT has been well demonstrated in several studies.1,2 It was also shown that MBF can be obtained with CZT-based SPECT systems having dynamic imaging capability.3‐10 Recently, several investigators demonstrated the feasibility of quantifying MBF with NaI-based dual-head SPECT systems equipped with rapid rotational gantry (RRG).11 In this edition of the journal of nuclear cardiology, Rongzheng et al. from Fu Wai Hospital, China, performed a head to head comparison between resting MBF obtained by a conventional SPECT system with RRG and a CZT-SPECT system in 20 patients with congestive heart failure (CHF subgroup) and left ventricular systolic dysfunction (ejection fraction < 50% by echocardiography), and 20 non-CHF patient group with normal systolic function. The majority of the CHF patients (19 of 20) were diagnosed as suffering from ischemic heart disease. All patients (20 CHF and 20 non-CHF) were scanned on both dual-head NaI-based SPECT system and a CZT-SPECT system on two consecutive days. The results demonstrated good correlation between resting MBF by conventional and CZT-SPECT systems in CHF and non-CHF patients, with good repeatability. Moreover, resting MBF was lower among CHF patients compared to non-CHF patients for both SPECT systems. …