2016 Volume 2 Issue 1 Pages 152-156
123I-meta-iodobenzylguanidine (MIBG) is a potent prognostic marker of chronic heart failure (CHF). However, inter-institutional variations due to methodological variations required minimization before 123I-MIBG findings could be universally applied to the diagnosis, treatment and prognosis of CHF. Therefore, protocols including data acquisition, setting regions of interest for calculating heart-to-mediastinum ratios (HMR) and cross-calibration of HMR among institutions required standardization. A cross-calibration phantom was introduced to overcome institutional differences, and a large amount of experimental data were collected, which enabled multicenter comparisons and the creation of large-scale prognostic databases. Thereafter, cardiac mortality risk models to estimate short- and long-term (two and five years, respectively) mortality were created based on a standardized 123I-MIBG HMR. The ability of these models to accurately determine prognosis is currently undergoing validation.
