The Choice of Application Has a Significant Effect on the Results of a PET Scan
The choice of software used by doctors to analyse myocardial blood flow with Positron Emission Tomography (PET) has a great impact on the results. This was demonstrated in the world’s largest study to compare the PET application software, designed in and managed from the Turku PET Centre of the University of Turku.
The PET scanner itself provides abstract and strange pictures which only give a clinical value when they are interpreted with the application software.
The research compared ten different applications and revealed that two different apps can lead to values of 1mL and 2mL from the same heart scan. According to the researchers, the difference is significant.
– The research shows that doctors should never compare cardiac PET results without accounting for their mathematical origin, even if they come from the same PET studied heart, says Dr. Sergey V. Nesterov from PET Centre.
Positron Emission Tomography is now the gold standard in imaging patients with atherosclerotic coronaries. The values doctors get from PET affect treatment of problematic hearts, and in the end, these values can affect the quality and length of a patient’s life.
However, the research group has good news as well – the majority of existing apps implement the same model and they can be used interchangeably.
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Text: JV
Translation: MR