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Purpose: To evaluate whether functional multi-slice computed tomography (MSCT) can identify regional areas of normally perfused and ischemic myocardium in a porcine model.
Material and Methods: Three out bred pigs, two of which had ameroids surgically implanted to constrict flow within the LAD and LCx coronary arteries, were injected with 25 mL of iopromide (Isovue) at a rate of 5 mL/second via the femoral or jugular vein. Sixty axial scans along the short axis of the heart was acquired on a 16-slice CT scanner (Philips MX8000-IDT) triggered at end-diastole of the cardiac cycle and acquiring an image within 270 msec. A second series of scans were taken after an intravenous injection of a vasodilator, 150 μg/kg/min of adenosine. ROIs were drawn around the myocardial tissue and the resulting time-density curves were used to extract perfusion values.
Results: Determination of the myocardial perfusion and fractional blood volume implementing three different perfusion models. A 5-point averaging or 'smoothing' algorithm was employed to effectively filter the data due to its noisy nature. The (preliminary) average perfusion and fractional blood volume values over selected axial slices for the pig without an artificially induced stenosis were measured to be 84 ± 22 mL/min/100g-tissue and 0.17 ± 0.04 mL/g-tissue, the former is consistent with PET scan and EBCT results. The pig with a stenosis in the left LAD coronary artery showed a reduced global perfusion value -- 45 mL/min/100g-tissue. Correlations in regional perfusion values relative to the stenosis were weak. During the infusion of adenosine, averaged perfusion values for the three subjects increased by 46 (±45) percent, comparable to increases measured with PET.
Conclusion: Quantifying global perfusion values using MDCT appear encouraging. Future work will focus resolving the systematic effects from noise due to signal fluctuation from the porcine tachyardia (80-93 BPM) and provide a more robust measurement of regional myocardial perfusion throughout the heart.
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