Abstract
Myocardial perfusion scintigraphy is one of the most frequent and, at the same time, the most technically complete nuclear medicine examination. Different types of artefacts can arise at any phase of examination and can cause erroneous interpretation.
Artefacts are mostly divided into those related to patients (motion, attenuation, extracardiac radioactivity, gating and patient features), related to procedure (radiopharmaceutical injection, position during acquisition, gamma camera filed of view), related to processing (filtering, myocardial axis rotation, region of interest, quantification, endocardium, color scale, image registration) and related to gamma camera (homogenity, center of rotation). This text is a review of the most frequent artefacts.
It explains briefly their causes, patterns and methods for their elimination or minimalization. It is neccessary for physicians and technologists to be aware of possible sources of artefacts, to employ all available ways to prevent them and to choose appropriate tools for their repair and to enclose their infulence into the study interpretation despite they appear.
Artefact elimination increases specificity and sensitivity of the procedure and maintains its significant role in the examination of patients with cardiovascular diseases.