According to a study, SPECT/CT misregistration of attenuation-corrected (AC) myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI) can greatly affect imaging quality, particularly along the cephalad/caudal, dorsal/ventral, and left/right axes. The study comprised a retrospective analysis of MPI studies performed on 144 patients in two groups.
The study was published In September 2009, in Journal of Nuclear Medicine.
The first group included 248 consecutive stress–rest MPI studies performed on 124 patients (60 men, mean age 62) to assess the incidence, magnitude, and direction of misregistration. In a second study group, cardiac SPECT/CT registration was artificially modified to determine the effect of misregistration on AC myocardial perfusion image quality.
SPECT/CT misregistration of greater than one pixel was found in 181 of the 248 studies, for a frequency of 73%. Misregistrations of more than one pixel along more than one axis, or misregistrations of more than three pixels, were found in 28% of the studies. Differences in misregistration of more than one pixel along at least one axis between the stress and the rest study of the same patient were found in 36% of patients.