Radionuclide assessment of myocardial flow reserve in patients with multivessel coronary artery disease

The aim of the study was to develop the methodology for collecting and processing the scintigraphic data to determine myocardial reserve on gamma camera with a solid state cadmium zinc tellurium detectors. Sixteen patients with coronary artery disease and 9 healthy volunteers underwent dynamic cardiac SPECT with 99mTc-MIBI at rest and at pharmacological stress-test. The processing of the results included construction of the “activity-time” curves based on the identification of regions of interest in the cavity and the walls of the left ventricular (LV) myocardium. Myocardial blood flow reserve index was determined as a quotient of two ratios of mean values of counts from the myocardial area to the area under the LV cavity curve obtained in stress test and at rest. According to our data, mean value of myocardial blood flow reserve was 1.86 (1.59; 2.2) in group of healthy volunteers and 1.39 (1.12; 1.69) in patients with coronary artery disease. Cardiac dynamic SPECT-based value of myocardial blood flow reserve index