Thesis (M.Sc.) - Cairo University - Faculty of Medicine - Department of Nuclear Medicine

The main objective of the study is to evaluate the role of prone images in attenuation correction and compare it to CT attenuation correction in myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI). Forty seven patients were initially included in the study. Statistical analysis was done for thirty patients with suspected or confirmed ischemic heart disease (IHD). All the patients underwent the ordinary supine stress/rest SPECT myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI) then; additional stress/rest prone SPECT as well as stress/rest SPECT/CT images were acquired, each study was interpreted separately and their results were compared. It was found that 58% (31/53) of the depicted defects were attributed to attenuation artifacts; the CT_AC imaging technique was able to correct 52.8% versus 49% for prone imaging. Our results showed that CT_AC technique is slightly better than prone imaging however, the results are still comparable. Also, CT-AC as well as the prone imaging increased the specificity and diagnostic accuracy of myocardial perfusion imaging, however the sensitivity is not affected, the sensitivity, specificity and diagnostic accuracy were 100%, 90.3% and 94.3% for CT_AC respectively versus 100%, 83.8% and 91% for prone imaging. Inferior wall defects were more common in males (95%) and anterior wall defects were more common in females (83.3%). In conclusion, both CT and prone imaging increased the specificity and diagnostic accuracy of myocardial perfusion imaging without affecting the sensitivity

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