Reproducibility of an automatic quantitation of regional myocardial wall motion and systolic thickening on gated 99mTc-sestamibi myocardial SPECT.
We investigated the reproducibility of an automatic quantitative algorithm for measuring regional myocardial wall motion and systolic thickening.


METHODS
99mTc-sestamibi gated myocardial SPECT with dipyridamole stress was performed twice consecutively on 31 patients with known or suspected coronary artery disease, with the patients in the same position for each scan. With AutoQUANT software, segmental wall motion and systolic thickening were quantified automatically and expressed in millimeters and percentage increase, respectively, for 20 segments. Afterward, the correlation and agreement between repeated measurements were investigated, and the influences of wall location, perfusion grade, and partitioning of the myocardium on reproducibility were evaluated by ANOVA and t testing.


RESULTS
High correlations (r = 0.95 for wall motion and 0.88 for systolic thickening) and good agreements (weighted kappa = 0.81 and 0.71, respectively) were obtained from repeated measurements on consecutive gated SPECT. Changes in wall location and perfusion grade did not cause significant differences between repeated measurements (P > 0.05 in ANOVA and t testing), but a change in partitioning did. On Bland-Altman analysis, 2 SDs for repeated wall motion and for systolic thickening were 2.0 mm and 20%, respectively.


CONCLUSIONS
The automatic quantitative algorithm for myocardial SPECT provided by AutoQUANT software has good reproducibility under diverse conditions. A change of motion > 2.0 mm or a change of systolic thickening > 20% can be regarded as significant during a follow-up study using this software.
Paeng
J C
JC
Department of Nuclear Medicine and Internal Medicine, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea.
Lee
D S
DS
Cheon
G J
GJ
Lee
M M
MM
Chung
J K
JK
Lee
M C
MC
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000465:Algorithms; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D003327:Coronary Disease / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000503:physiopathology; D004176:Dipyridamole; D005260:Female; D015637:Gated Blood-Pool Imaging; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009200:Myocardial Contraction; D019275:Radiopharmaceuticals; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012984:Software; D013599:Systole; D017256:Technetium Tc 99m Sestamibi; D015899:Tomography, Emission-Computed, Single-Photon
D019275:Radiopharmaceuticals; D004176:Dipyridamole; D017256:Technetium Tc 99m Sestamibi