Radiology, Vol 168, 723-726, Copyright © 1988 by Radiological Society of North America
Short-axis circumferential profiles of the heart in healthy subjects: comparison of T1-201 SPECT and two-dimensional echocardiography
M Clausen, AC Civelek, AN Bice, J Petronis, D Koller, S Loncaric, JL Weiss and HN Wagner Jr
Division of Nuclear Medicine, Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, Baltimore, MD 21205-2179.
To correlate the findings at thallium-201 single photon emission computed
tomography (SPECT) with left ventricular anatomy, circumferential wall
thickness was measured in 12 healthy subjects with two-dimensional
echocardiography. At the midpapillary level, eight anatomic structures were
identified with echocardiography, as were four maxima (papillary muscles
and junctions of the left ventricular myocardium with the right ventricle,
both anteriorly and posteriorly) and the intervening minima (including the
septum). Tl-201 SPECT was performed in the same subjects. The normalized
circumferential count profiles of the short-axis sections that included the
papillary muscles showed the same basic pattern as that on echocardiograms.
In most cases, the posterior papillary muscle and the posterior junction
with the right ventricle were not distinguishable from each other, which
produced three circumferential profile maxima instead of four. When values
from all subjects were averaged, left ventricular anatomy was less evident
in the circumferential profile. Left ventricular anatomic structures were
reflected to a similar degree with either 180 degrees or 360 degrees data
sampling.
