Abstract
A multi-center study in 42 hospitals was performed to evaluate the clinical efficacy of routine regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) measurement studies using brain perfusion SPECT in patients who underwent several SPECT studies in a clinical examination. Seven hundred and nine measurements of rCBF were carried out by a noninvasive Patlak-plot method using Tc-99m ECD in 333 patients. The usefulness of qualitative and quantitative images were analyzed by both the physicians in charge of the patients and image reading committees. Both groups reported that the quantitative method was more useful than the qualitative one in approximately 70% of all the studies. These results suggest that quantitative rCBF measurements using a noninvasive Patlak-plot method play an important role in diagnosis and evaluation of therapeutical effects.
