Myocardial Perfusion Imaging (MPI), or, simply put, the imaging of a tracer (or contrast agent) in the blood, flowing through the heart muscle, plays an important role in diagnosing heart failure or detecting Coronary Artery Disease (CAD). Imaging systems like CT, MRI, PET, or SPECT can visualise such (radioactive) tracer (or contrast agent) in the coronary arteries and in myocardial tissue. The flow of the tracer (or contrast agent) can give an indication of narrowed or blocked blood vessels. In 2016, in the Netherlands alone, 272,234 men and woman have been admitted for Coronary Vascular Diseases (CVD), which includes CAD. The cause of these admissions can be prevented by a timely diagnosis of possible CVD, especially in high-risk groups (obese, smokers, diabetic).
Many variations in the visualisation process of myocardial perfusion can (significantly) influence the outcome and in turn have consequences for patient treatment. Quantitative perfusion measurements, for the D-SPECT, is relatively new in the Netherlands and must be validated against well-known baselines such that the precision, accuracy, and reliability can be evaluated.
Current perfusion phantoms lack compatibility with clinical software. During my master’s thesis, I have designed and realised a myocardial perfusion phantom for the purpose of validating quantitative perfusion measurements. This phantom is unique in the way that it is compatible with clinical software and produces images equivalent to those obtained in patient studies.