A myocardial perfusion imaging system using a multifocal collimator for detecting coronary artery disease: validation with invasive coronary angiography

Objective Myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI) systems using a multifocal collimator can reduce scan time substantially compared with conventional MPI systems. In this study, we evaluated the diagnostic accuracy of multifocal collimator SPECT/CT in coronary artery disease (CAD) detection by comparing it with coronary artery angiography (CAG). Methods We retrospectively analyzed 50 consecutive patients who had undergone CAG and stress 201 Tl MPI multifocal collimator SPECT/CT within a 3-month period. A summed difference score (SDS) was calculated for each vascular territory from the MPI images. On CAG, a stenotic coronary artery was defined as one with luminal narrowing of ≥75 % with quantitative coronary angiography software. Results We analyzed the diagnostic accuracy of coronary artery stenosis detection using the definition that a coronary artery territory was ischemic when the SDS per vessel was ≥2. We generated receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves to evaluate the usefulness of SDS per vascular territory to find coronary artery stenoses. The area under the ROC curve was 0.86 and cut-off value was 2. Sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value, and accuracy to detect stenoses were 85, 83, 66, 94 and 84 %, respectively. Conclusions We confirmed the high accuracy of imaging with multifocal collimator SPECT/CT for detection of angiographically significant CAD.