Development of quantification software using model-based segmentation of left ventricular myocardium in gated myocardial SPECT

Gated myocardial single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) is being used for the diagnosis of coronary artery diseases. In this study, we developed new software for the quantification of volumes and ejection fraction (EF) on the gated myocardial SPECT data using a cylindrical model. Volumes and EF by developed software were validated by comparing with those quantified by quantitative gated SPECT (QGS) software. Cylinder model for left ventricular myocardium was used to eliminate background activity and count profiles across the myocardium were fitted to the Gaussian curve to determine the endocardial and epicardial boundary. End-diastolic volume (EDV), end-systolic volume (ESV) and EF were calculated using this boundary information. Gated myocardial SPECT was performed in 83 patients. EDV, ESV and EF values estimated using present method were compared to those obtained using the commercialized software QGS, and reproducibility in the parameter estimation was assessed. EF, EDV and ESV obtained using two methods were correlated well (correlation coefficients = 0.96, 0.96 and 0.98). The correlation between the parameters repetitively estimated from the same data set by an operator was very high (correlation coefficients = 0.96, 0.99 and 0.99 for EF, EDV and ESV). On the repeated acquisition, reproducibility was also high with correlation coefficients of 0.89, 0.97 and 0.98. The present software will be useful for the development of new parameters for describing the perfusion and function of the LV.