Absolute left ventricular volume by an iterative build-up factor analysis of gated radionuclide images

A method for determining absolute left ventricular (LV) volumes from radionuclide gated blood-pool (GBP) images was validated in 34 patients. The technique is nongeometric, corrects for tissue attenuation, and uses an experimentally determined set of build-up factors to account for the effects of scatter. Only four parameters are needed to determine LV volumes: the LV count rates from a left anterior oblique (LAO) and a right posterior oblique (RPO) image (180 degrees opposed to the LAO), a venous blood sample, and a patient thickness measurement. A computer algorithm is used to reach an iterative solution to two simultaneous equations that yield LV volumes. Phantom studies showed less than 4% error for volume determinations at all investigated depths. For the patients studied the correlation between volumes obtained by GBP and contrast ventriculography was 0.97 for diastole and 0.96 for systole.