RESEARCH ARTICLE
Soft Tissue Attenuation Patterns Associated with Upright Acquisition SPECT Myocardial Perfusion Imaging: A Descriptive Study
Rami Doukky 1 , *, Mouyyad Rahaby 2, Dave Chawla 1, Raj Vashistha 2, Tareq Alyousef 2, Amit P Amin 2
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2012Volume: 6
First Page: 22
Last Page: 27
Publisher ID: TOCMJ-6-22
DOI: 10.2174/1874192401206010022
Article History:
Received Date: 2/11/2011Revision Received Date: 12/1/2012
Acceptance Date: 26/1/2012
Electronic publication date: 13/3/2012
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
Background:
Little is known about soft tissue attenuation artifacts when an upright patient-position SPECTmyocardial perfusion imaging (MPI) system is used. In this investigation we sought to describe the patterns and frequency of attenuation artifacts associated with this type of instruments and we explored the impact of gender and body habitus on these artifacts.
Methods:
In a cross-sectional study, we described the prevalence of various soft-tissue attenuation patterns in 212 normal SPECT-MPI studies acquired with an upright patient-position imaging system.
Results:
In these 212 normal, clinically-indicated, upright-acquisition SPECT-MPIs the attenuation patterns observed were: anterior (6.1%), inferior (63.7%) and lateral (24.1%). Though uncommon, anterior attenuation trended to being more prevalent among women [9.5% vs. 3.4%, P=0.07] and was independently associated with chest circumference. Lateral attenuation was more common among women [34.7% vs. 15.4%, p=0.001] and was strongly associated with obesity (p<0.001). Inferior attenuation was more prevalent among men than women (75.2% vs. 49.5% respectively, P<0.001).
Conclusions:
Soft-tissue attenuation artifacts are common in upright-acquisition SPECT-MPI. Recognizing the frequency of these attenuation patterns and their interaction with gender and body habitus is critical for the accurate interpretation of SPECT-MPI.
