New quantitative indices of cardiac amyloidosis with Tc-99m-pyrophosphate scintigraphy

Purpose Amyloid light chain (AL) and transthyretin (ATTR) are the major subtypes of cardiac amyloidosis (CA). Tc-99m-pyrophosphate (PYP) scintigraphy is used to differentiate ATTR from other CA subtypes. We adapted the standardized uptake value (SUV) for Tc-99m-PYP and proposed two quantitative indices, amyloid deposition volume (AmyDV) and total amyloid uptake (TAU). This study aimed to evaluate the utility of these quantitative indices in differentiating ATTR from non-ATTRs. Materials and methods Before the SUV measurement, the Becquerel calibration factor (BCF) of Tc-99m was obtained by a phantom experiment. Thirty-two patients who had undergone hybrid SPECT/CT imaging 3 h after injection of Tc-99m-PYP (370 MBq) were studied. CT attenuation correction for image reconstruction was applied in all. We calculated SUV, AmyDV, and TAU using a quantitative analysis software program for bone SPECT (GI-BONE) and analyzed AmyDV using two methods: threshold method (set 40%); and constant value method (average SUVmax of ribs). We assessed the diagnostic ability of heart-to-contralateral lung (H/CL) ratio, SUV, AmyDV, and TAU to differentiate ATTR from non-ATTR using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis. Results Statistically significant differences in all quantitative indices were observed between ATTR and non-ATTR. The area under the curve of each quantitative index for discriminating between ATTR and non-ATTR were as follows: H/CL, 0.997; SUVmax, 0.953; SUVmean (M1), 0.964; SUVmean (M2), 0.969; AmyDV (M1), 0.875; AmyDV (M2), 0.974; and TAU, 0.974. The AmyDV (M2) had higher diagnostic ability than AmyDV (M1). Thus, TAU was calculated as AmyDV (M2) x SUVmean (M2). In the ROC curve, SUV, AmyDV, and TAU had almost the same diagnostic ability as H/CL in distinguishing ATTR from non-ATTRs. Conclusions We propose two novel 3D-based quantitative parameters (AmyDV and TAU) that have almost equal ability to discriminate ATTR from non-ATTR.