Study of ECG-gated thallium-201 myocardial scintigraphy: is imaging time a limiting factor?

Twenty patients underwent gated synchronized 201Tl myocardial scanning (TMS). Twelve also performed a rest blood pool multigated acquisition ( MUGA ) study. A 'static' image was obtained by adding all the gated frames of the study. In this way we found the conventional static study quite unnecessary. Comparing the gated TMS to the static one revealed significantly improved resolution in the gated images and additional information concerning wall motion and myocardial thickness. Close agreement was found with results of MUGA studies of the same patients. By the addition of diastolic frames the imaging time needed to obtain improved image quality was found to be not more than 10 min per view. The exclusion of imaging time as a limiting factor for gated TMS is stressed.