Excerpt

Conducting a valid medical imaging study requires diligent quality assurance (QA) of imaging equipment, attention to all patient-specific details during data acquisition, assessment of data integrity of acquired data once the study is complete, and careful computer processing of image data.1 In the current issue of the Journal of Nuclear Cardiology, Malek et al2 review some of the important elements of QA procedures required to produce reliable computations of left ventricular (LV) perfusion and function parameters from gated SPECT myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI) data for the Cedars-Sinai QGS program,3 which is a commonly used commercially available MPI analysis software package. While other algorithms operate on somewhat different principles and LV modeling assumptions,4,5 all MPI software packages have in common the automated identification of the LV outflow tract valve plane, endocardial and epicardial borders. As the authors remind us, failure to ensure the appropriate locations of LV limits can compromise the validity of summed stress scores, summed rest scores, ejection fractions, LV volumes, LV mass, lung:heart count ratios, and transient ischemic dilatation, among other parameters. …