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Erschienen in:
01.07.2020 | Original Article
Whole-vessel coronary 18F-sodium fluoride PET for assessment of the global coronary microcalcification burden
Erschienen in: European Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging | Ausgabe 7/2020
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Purpose
18F-sodium fluoride (18F-NaF) has shown promise in assessing disease activity in coronary arteries, but currently used measures of activity – such as maximum target to background ratio (TBRmax) – are defined by single pixel count values. We aimed to develop a novel coronary-specific measure of 18F-NaF PET reflecting activity throughout the entire coronary vasculature (coronary microcalcification activity [CMA]).
Methods
Patients with recent myocardial infarction and multi-vessel coronary artery disease underwent 18F-NaF PET and coronary CT angiography. We assessed the association between coronary 18F-NaF uptake (both TBRmax and CMA) and coronary artery calcium scores (CACS) as well as low attenuation plaque (LAP, attenuation < 30 Hounsfield units) volume.
Results
In 50 patients (64% males, 63 ± 7 years), CMA and TBRmax were higher in vessels with LAP compared to those without LAP (1.09 [0.02, 2.34] versus 0.0 [0.0, 0.0], p < 0.001 and 1.23 [1.16, 1.37] versus 1.04 [0.93, 1.11], p < 0.001). Compared to a TBRmax threshold of 1.25, CMA > 0 had a higher diagnostic accuracy for detection of LAP: sensitivity of 93.1 (83.3–98.1)% versus 58.6 (44.9–71.4)% and a specificity of 95.7 (88.0–99.1)% versus 80.0 (68.7–88.6)% (both p < 0.001).
18F-NaF uptake assessed by CMA correlated more closely with LAP (r = 0.86, p < 0.001) than the CT calcium score (r = 0.39, p < 0.001), with these associations outperforming those observed for TBRmax values (LAP r = 0.63, p < 0.001; CT calcium score r = 0.30, p < 0.001).
Conclusions
Automated assessment of disease activity across the entire coronary vasculature is feasible using 18F-NaF CMA, providing a single measurement that has closer agreement with CT markers of plaque vulnerability than more traditional measures of plaque activity.