Relationship between the relative regional thallium-201 uptake and the regional systolic or diastolic filling function

Both the resting thallium-201 imaging and resting gated radionuclide ventriculography were conducted in the left anterior oblique view in 35 patients with isolated disease of the left anterior descending coronary artery (LAD), and the corresponding involved region was compared from two differing perspectives, one measuring regional ventricular function and the other regional myocardial perfusion. In the thallium-201 imaging, the thallium activity in the septal or apical region supplied by the LAD was calculated as an activity ratio between the mean value of the normally perfused lateral region and that of the septal or apical region, and was called relative thallium uptake (%T1 uptake). In the gated radionuclide ventriculographic study, a computer program subdivided the image of the left ventricle into 4 regions. The time-activity and first-derivative curves were computed in the septal and apical regions. Significant positive correlations were present between the %T1 uptake and the ejection fraction or peak ejection rate both in the septal and apical regions, indicating that the regional systolic function diminishes progressively as the perfusion abnormality increases. However, positive but poor and scattering correlations were found between the %T1 uptake and the peak filling rate, and there were no significant correlations between the %T1 uptake and the filling period in these affected regions. Thus, we could suppose that the regional systolic function is closely related to the regional %T1 uptake which probably reflects the amount of the residual viable myocardium, but there is the possibility that the regional diastolic filling function may be not so much related to the amount of the viable myocardium as is systolic function or may be modulated by some factors other than the amount of the regional viable myocardium.