Purpose: To asses adenosine stress myocardial perfusion by cardiac CT and compare with simultaneously performed attenuation corrected SPECT.

Methods: 11 patients, 9 men and 2 women >2months post primary PCI, with manifest myocardial damage and remaining stenoses in the coronary circulation, were studied with myocardial perfusion CT under vasodilatory stress. The investigation started with a topogram followed by a testbolus of iodine whereafter the coronary artery study was performed in sequence mode. Adenosine was then infused for at least five minutes at the standard rate of 140ug/kg/min. After three minutes, 6 MBq/kg of 99mTc-tetrofosmin was injected immediately followed by 80ml iodine contrast. The wash-in of iodine was monitored by CT scanning of a 7cm long cardiac volume segment every other second for 22s. One hour after the CT scan, myocardial SPECT was performed. Scanning required the patients to tolerate breath holding for 22s, have a heart rate <80/min and body weight <85kg, and their kidney function should allow 140ml 370mg iodine contrast to be given.

Results: All 11 patients tolerated the full adenosine infusion and scanning was successful. One patient could not be analyzed due to noisy images. In two patients, the limited scanning volume did not cover the entire base of the heart. Three patients had no defect on SPECT. Patients with a defect had on average myocardial blood flow 80ml/100ml tissue/min in the defect area and 142ml in the segments with the highest perfusion, while patients without defect had 98 and 141ml, respectively.

Conclusion: Peak myocardial perfusion may be determined with CT under adenosine stress and compared with attenuation corrected SPECT. Initial experience shows that the method is sensitive to timing of bolus, to noisy images and results may diverge from those obtained with SPECT.