Advances in software for faster procedure and lower radiotracer dose myocardial perfusion imaging

The American Society of Nuclear Cardiology has recently published documents that encourage laboratories to take all the appropriate steps to greatly decrease patient radiation dose and has set the goal of 50% of all myocardial perfusion studies performed with an associated radiation exposure of 9mSv by 2014. In the present work, a description of the major software techniques readily available to shorten procedure time and decrease injected activity is presented. Particularly new reconstruction methods and their ability to include means for resolution recovery and noise regularization are described. The use of these improved reconstruction algorithms results in a consistent reduction in acquisition time, injected activity and consequently in the radiation dose absorbed by the patient. The clinical implications to the use of these techniques are also described in terms of maintained and even improved study quality, accuracy and sensitivity for the detection of heart disease.