Changes in quantitative SPECT thallium-201 results associated with the use of energy-weighted acquisition.

The effect of utilizing energy-weighted acquisition on quantitative analysis of SPECT thallium-201 images was evaluated by simultaneously acquiring energy-weighted and windowed projection images in ten patients. The paired image sets were processed identically and evaluated by probability analysis of defect magnitude as indicated by a commercially available software analysis package. It was predicted that defect magnitude would increase as a result of improved image contrast. This was confirmed experimentally. One should be cautious in relying on strict quantitative criteria in cardiac studies with thallium-201, especially when major changes in the imaging system or technique are introduced.