PET/MRI Outshines SPECT in CAD Detection

Coronary artery disease is one of the leading causes of death throughout the world. Almost every sixth American dies because of coronary artery disease (CAD) on average. Most of the time, people become aware of their heart disease only once they suffer an ischemic attack. Before that, they do not give much importance to their health and diet. But now the mindset of the society is changing as different techniques have become available these days to find out the relative risk of ischemia among the people. One of such techniques is PET/MR which has totally overtaken the previous technology i.e. SPECT. Positron emission tomography and magnetic resonance imaging (PET/MR) greatly aid sin determining he physiologic functioning of the heart and giving images of high quality as compare to single photon emission photo tomography (SPECT). Research analysts have stated that PET/MR has proven to be 100% accurate in diagnosing the CAD, with 100% sensitivity and 100% negative predictive value. Because of these values, it has totally outclassed the SPECT technology.

PET/MR has overhauled SPECT technology in number of ways such as:

1. PET/MR has been found more accurate in finding the extent of ischemic disease as compare to SPECT.
2. SPECT technology isn’t able to find the hidden ischemic areas in the heart but PET/MR can easily do it due to its advanced imaging technology and acknowledging both the functional and anatomical status of the heart
3. PET/MR is time saving as compare to SPECT which requires more time to be done.
4. Patent is exposed to lesser radiation dose during PET/MR as compare to SPECT
5. In contrast to SPECT, PET/MR also attributes by giving the quantitative data of blood circulatory flow along with pictorial diagram of the ischemia extent.