Measurement of left ventricular ejection fraction using gated 99mTc-sestamibi myocardial planar images: comparison to contrast ventriculography.

Abstract

Using the new myocardial perfusion agent 99mTc-sestamibi and multigated acquisition on a nuclear medicine gamma camera, the left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) was derived in 13 patients with coronary artery disease (CAD). Cross-sectional activity profiles were used to measure the left ventricle from end-diastolic and end-systolic images. Several different geometric methods were then utilized to derive ejection fractions from the nuclear data. Comparison of the resultant ejection fractions to those obtained from contrast ventriculography showed significant correlation for all geometric methods (P less than 0.01, Sy X x = 6.2 to 9.6). We conclude that in patients with CAD one or more of these simple geometric methods can provide a useful estimate of the LVEF when performing 99mTc-sestamibi multigated myocardial perfusion imaging.