Quantitative Study of Rigid-Body and Respiratory Motion of Patients Undergoing Stress and Rest Cardiac SPECT Imaging

We report patient motion in 110 Tl-201 cardiac perfusion SPECT studies in 66 patients. The imaging consisted of emission followed by sequential transmission imaging during which motion tracking with a visual tracking system (VTS) was performed. We investigated the extent, time, and frequency of respiratory and rigid-body motion in these patients. We also determined whether the motion occurred gradually or in sudden jumps, whether it was sustained, and if it occurred along one or more axes predominantly. We then studied the differences in respiratory and body motion (BM), if any, between stress versus rest imaging groups, male versus female subjects, and exercise versus pharmacological stress groups. We found that 23% of the studies had sustained motion (> 4 min.) of between 3-6 mm, and 5% had sustained motion larger than 6 mm during emission imaging. In terms of respiratory motion, 13% showed a downward trend of the respiratory baseline of more than 6 mm during emission imaging. Also, in 9% of the studies, the average position of patients was displaced by more than 3 mm between emission and transmission imaging phases. Both of these motions may lead to misalignment of the attenuation map. In hypothesis testing of grouped studies, it was determined that stress and rest imaging did not show any significant differences in body motion but did in respiratory motion associated with a change in respiration following stress. Exercise-stress studies showed a larger extent of respiratory motion than the pharmacologically induced stress studies. Significant differences in body and respiratory motion of male and female groups were also observed. A visual assessment of the reconstructed slices in the studies with measured motion was made to investigate the impact of the motion. Illustrative example studies are included.