Detection of one-millimeter motion under conditions simulating equilibrium blood-pool scinitgraphy

The widespread clinical applications of multiple-gated equilibrium cardiac blood-pool scintigraphy for qualitative assessment of regional left-ventricular wall motion has raised questions regarding the limits of detectable motion. Under conditions simulating some of the elements of cardiac motion, and using variables associated with multiple-gated equilibrium scintigraphy, we have studied these limits both theoretically and experimentally. The theory of detecting simple edge motion as a function of motion magnitude, system resolution, and counts per pixel is studied both conceptually and by statistical analysis using a line-source activity distribution represented as Gaussian. The experiment involves six independent observers in the qualitative evaluation of the presence and location of edge motion of two cylindrical activity distributions as displayed by a computer.