Heterogeneity of myocardial wall motion and thickening in the left ventricle evaluated with quantitative gated SPECT.
BACKGROUND
Global and regional ventricular function may be evaluated by using gated myocardial perfusion single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT). This study investigated two parameters of regional contraction of the left ventricle, segmental wall motion (WM) and wall thickening (WT), to determine their similarity and disparity in each myocardial segment in patients with normal myocardial perfusion.


RESULTS
Thirty-five patients with normal myocardial perfusion and cardiac function (mean left ventricular ejection fraction, 62.6%+/-8.8%) were included in this study. A 1-day stress/rest protocol was used as a means of acquiring technetium 99m (Tc-99m) sestamibi gated SPECT protocol for each patient. A commercially available software package for quantitative gated SPECT (QGS) was used to generate cine loop three-dimensional surface display and SPECT images. The left ventricle was divided into 9 segments to score WM and WT (on a scale of 0 to 4, with 0 being normal and 4 being severely reduced) by 6 independent observers. The WM score was significantly higher than the WT score in the septum, whereas the WM score was lower than the WT score in the inferior segment. Similar WM and WT scores were observed in the remaining segments.


CONCLUSIONS
Heterogeneous myocardial WM and WT were observed by using QGS software. These findings suggest that different criteria are required in each segment to evaluate segmental WM and WT by means of gated myocardial perfusion SPECT.
Adachi
I
I
Department of Nuclear Medicine, Hokkaido University School of Medicine, Sapporo, Japan.
Morita
K
K
Imran
M B
MB
Konno
M
M
Mochizuki
T
T
Kubo
N
N
Itoh
Y
Y
Kato
C
C
Tsukamoto
E
E
Tamaki
N
N
D000255:Adenosine Triphosphate; D003326:Coronary Circulation; D005080:Exercise Test; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009200:Myocardial Contraction; D019275:Radiopharmaceuticals; D012984:Software; D017256:Technetium Tc 99m Sestamibi; D015899:Tomography, Emission-Computed, Single-Photon; D016277:Ventricular Function, Left
D019275:Radiopharmaceuticals; D000255:Adenosine Triphosphate; D017256:Technetium Tc 99m Sestamibi