Clinical evaluation of thallium-201 emission myocardial tomography using a rotating gamma camera: comparison with seven-pinhole tomography.
Single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) for thallium-201 myocardial imaging with a rotating gamma camera was evaluated  in comparison with planar imaging and seven-pinhole tomography (7P). Cardiac phantom studies indicated that defects 2 cm in diameter can be visualized by both tomographic methods, but the 7P method showed propagation of the image into nearby planes, with lower image contrast. In a clinical study of 47 patients with myocardial infarction, both sensitivity and specificity for the SPECT system were high (96 and 89%, respectively); the 7P system, on the other hand, showed good sensitivity (93%) but poor specificity (68%), while planar imaging performed conversely (75 against 89%). The overall accuracy was not significantly improved in the 7P method (planar: 81%, 7P: 83%, and SPECT: 94%). Our study indicates that SPECT, which can reconstruct reliable tomographic sections in either the transaxial, frontal, or sagittal planes, will result in a remarkable improvement in the clinical evaluation of ischemic heart disease.
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D005188:False Negative Reactions; D005189:False Positive Reactions; D005260:Female; D006321:Heart / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009203:Myocardial Infarction / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging; D011868:Radioisotopes; D013793:Thallium; D014055:Tomography, Emission-Computed / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*
D011868:Radioisotopes; D013793:Thallium