How well do individual first pass perfusion images correlate with fully quantitative myocardial blood flow pixel maps?

Methods 27 subjects (17 male; age 62 ± 11 years) with coronary artery disease as defined by quantitative coronary angiography were included in this study. Greater than 70% luminal coronary stenosis of the major epicardial coronaries was present in 2/3 of the subjects. Perfusion imaging was performed using a saturation recovery steadystate free precession dual-sequence method at 1.5 T during Regadenoson vasodilator stress and at rest, using 0.05 mmol/kg Gadolinium-DTPA. Pixel-wise MBF maps were calculated from a mid-ventricular motion-corrected image series. Myocardial regions of interest were manually traced on the perfusion image series to restrict analysis to the myocardium. The MBF pixel values were then correlated with individual perfusion image signal intensities on a pixel-by-pixel basis for each perfusion image in the series (Pearson’s correlation coefficient).