Clinical usefulness of a novel program "Heart Function View" for evaluating cardiac function from gated myocardial...

To investigate clinical usefulness of a novel program "Heart Function View (HFV)" for evaluating left ventricular (LV) function from myocardial perfusion SPECT (MPS), we compared LV functional parameters (F(x)) calculated by HFV with those obtained by the other similar programs QGS and cardioGRAF or by ultrasound echocardiography (UCG) and examined their correlations with clinical markers of heart failure: plasma BNP concentrations (BNPs) and exercise capacity.

Studied patients (n = 60) underwent technetium-99m tetrofosmin quantitative gated MPS including treadmill exercise for examining heart disease. Myocardial stress images were acquired 30 min after the first tracer injection during maximal exercise. Three hours later, the second tracer was injected, and resting images were acquired. LV systolic F(x) [ejection fraction (EF), peak ejection rate (PER)] and diastolic F(x) [first third filling fraction (1/3FF), first third filling rate (1/3FR), peak filling rate (PFR), time to PFR (TPF)] were analyzed, and phase standard deviation (SD) and histogram bandwidth were obtained by phase analysis.

LV end-diastolic volume (EDV), end-systolic volume (ESV) and EF obtained from HFV were well correlated with those from QGS, cardioGRAF and UCG. A diastolic parameter Doppler E/e' from UCG was significantly with PFR from HFV. There were good correlations between LVEDV, LVESV, LVEF, PER, PFR, 1/3FR, TPF and 1/3FF from HFV and those from cardioGRAF. LVEF, PER, 1/3FR, and PFR were significantly correlated with plasma BNP concentrations. In patients with non-ischemic heart disease (n = 42), phase SD and histogram bandwidth were correlated negatively with exercise capacity or PFR.

HFV-derived LVF(x) are correlated with LVF(x) from the other programs or UCG, or with the clinical markers of heart failure and are thus useful in the functional assessment for patients with heart disease.