The validity of multi-center common normal database for identifying myocardial ischemia: Japanese Society of Nuclear...

The Japanese Society of Nuclear Medicine (JSNM) working group has created a myocardial perfusion imaging database applicable to standard acquisition protocol. The aim of this study is to validate the diagnostic accuracy of the common normal database compared with the expert interpretation of each institute.

Five institutions participated in this study and used different acquisition settings which included 360 degrees /180 degrees rotation, camera configuration and camera orbits. The software and its version used in each institution also varied. The working group database was applied to detect the culprit coronary territory from a total of 166 patients with coronary artery disease (CAD) and 145 patients with low-likelihood of CAD.

When summed stress score > or =4 was defined as significant abnormality, overall sensitivity, specificity and accuracy of patient-based analysis were 77, 72 and 75%, respectively, based on quantitative analysis using the common database, whereas those by institutional visual expert reading were 72, 79 and 75%, respectively.

The common database, which was created by a multi-center working group and separated between male/female with 180/360 degrees acquisitions, demonstrated comparable diagnostic accuracy to expert interpretation by each institute, and it may be applicable to multi-center studies.