Nuclear myocardial perfusion imaging with a novel cadmium-zinc-telluride detector SPECT/CT device: first validation versus invasive coronary angiography.

PURPOSE: We evaluated the diagnostic accuracy of attenuation corrected nuclear myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI) with a novel hybrid single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT)/CT device consisting of an ultrafast dedicated cardiac gamma camera with cadmium-zinc-telluride (CZT) solid-state semiconductor detectors integrated onto a multislice CT scanner to detect coronary artery disease (CAD). Invasive coronary angiography served as the standard of reference.

METHODS: The study population included 66 patients (79% men; mean age 63 ± 11 years) who underwent 1-day (99m)Tc-tetrofosmin pharmacological stress/rest examination and angiography within 3 months. Sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV) and negative predictive value (NPV) as well as accuracy of the CT X-ray based attenuation corrected CZT MPI for detection of CAD (≥ 50% luminal narrowing) was calculated on a per-patient basis.

RESULTS: The prevalence of angiographic CAD in the study population was 82%. Sensitivity, specificity, PPV, NPV and accuracy were 87, 67, 92, 53 and 83%, respectively.

CONCLUSION: In this first report on CZT SPECT/CT MPI comparison versus angiography we confirm a high accuracy for detection of angiographically documented CAD.