RESEARCH ARTICLE
Soft Tissue Attenuation Patterns Associated with Supine Acquisition SPECT Myocardial Perfusion Imaging: A Descriptive Study
Rami Doukky 1, *, Mouyyad Rahaby 2, Tareq Alyousef 2, Raj Vashistha 2, Dave Chawla 3, Amit P Amin 4
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2012Volume: 6
First Page: 33
Last Page: 37
Publisher ID: TOCMJ-6-33
DOI: 10.2174/1874192401206010033
Article History:
Received Date: 1/11/2011Revision Received Date: 20/2/2012
Acceptance Date: 3/3/2012
Electronic publication date: 17/4/2012
Collection year: 2012
open-access license: This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited.
Abstract
Purpose:
Soft-tissue attenuation patterns in SPECT-myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI) of supine acquisition systems are well recognized. Their prevalence and interaction with body-habitus and gender are ill-defined, which we sought to describe in this study.
Methods:
In a cross-sectional study, we described the prevalence of soft-tissue attenuation patterns in normal SPECT-MPI studies acquired with a supine patient-position SPECT system.
Results:
In 263 normal, clinically-indicated, supine-acquisition SPECT-MPIs the attenuation patterns observed were: anterior (35.4%), inferior (41.8%) and lateral (13.3%). Anterior attenuation was more prevalent among women (50.7% vs. 15.7%, P<0.001) and was associated with chest circumference among men. Conversely, inferior attenuation was more prevalent among men (78.3% vs. 13.5%, P<0.001) and was not affected by body-habitus. Lateral attenuation was more common among women (19.6% vs. 5.2%, p=0.001) and was associated with obesity (p=0.015).
Conclusions:
Soft-tissue attenuation artifacts are common in supine-acquisition SPECT-MPI. The recognition of their prevalence and association with body-habitus and gender is critical for the accurate interpretation of SPECT-MPI.
