Emission-Computed Tomography and Its Application to Imaging of Acute Myocardial Infarction in Intact Dogs Using Tc-99m Pyrophosphate

The techniques of emission-computed tomography have been used to obtain in vivo quantitative estimates of the three-dimensional distribution of gamma-emitting radionuclides in dog hearts. Conjugate views, obtained for 60 equiangular projections around 360 degrees by rotating the object in front of a gamma camera, were used to reconstruct multiple-level emission transaxial images for various test objects, and for dogs with surgically induced acute myocardial infarcts. Corrections for attenuation were performed in the backprojection step of the convolution algorithm used for reconstruction. Quantitative estimates of the spatial extent and concentration of activity were obtained to within 10--15% rms error. Correlations were obtained between the radionuclide and histopathologic estimates of the extent and location of infarction.