Comparing the Cardiac MRI and Thallium-201 SPECT Findings in Assessing Myocardial Viability in Patients with ST Elevation Myocardial Infarction

Background and Viable tissue detection after STEMI can lead to successful revascularization for reversing myocardial dysfunction. The purpose of this study was to compare the Thallium-201 SPECT and MRI findings in viability assessment.
A cross-sectional study was performed in 17 patients with STEMI. In addition to Thallium SPECT, contrast enhanced MRI imaging was done. Viability was determined as more than 50 percent thallium uptake after 4 hours in SPECT and lower than 50 percent gadolinium enhancement after 10 minutes in each segments in CMRI.
Two hundred eighty nine segments were studied in each method of which 15.6% in TL SPECT and 35% in MRI were considered as non-viable tissue. Substantial agreement was detected between these methods in apical septal and apical segments (k: 0.653, k: 0.757, respectively).
The percentage of non-viable myocard in MRI was found to be higher than that of Thallium SPECT and also considerable agreement was seen between MRI and Thallium SPECT in determination of myocard viability in apical septal and apex segments.