Abstract
BACKGROUND: Myocardial blood flow (MBF) and flow reserve (MFR) examination, especially useful in the diagnosis of multivessel coronary artery disease (CAD), can be assessed with a cadmium-zinc-telluride (CZT) SPECT gamma camera, as an alternative to the expensive and less available PET. However, study processing is not free from subjective factors. Therefore, this paper aims to evaluate intra- and interobserver repeatability of MBF and MFR values obtained by the same operator and two independent operators. METHODS: This study included 57 adult patients. MBF and MFR were assessed using a Discovery NM530c camera in a two-day, rest/dipyridamople protocol, using (99m)Tc-MIBI. Data were processed using Corridor4DM software, twice by one operator and once by another operator. RESULTS: The repeatability of the assessed values was quite good in the whole myocardium, LAD and LCX vascular territories, but was poor in the RCA territory. CONCLUSIONS: The poor repeatability of MBF and MFR in RCA vascular territory can be explained by poor automatic orientation of the heart axis during post-processing and a so-called "cardiac creep" phenomenon. Better automatic heart orientation and introduction of automatic motion correction is likely to drastically improve this repeatability. In the present state of the software, PET is better for patients requiring assessment of MFR in the RCA territory.