Radiopharmaceutical developer FluoroPharma Medical said that a phase II trial concluded that its CardioPET radiopharmaceutical had significantly better image quality than SPECT and produced comparable diagnostic performance for coronary artery disease (CAD).
The multi-institutional study, which was presented September 24 at the American Society of Nuclear Cardiology (ASNC) annual meeting, compared the ability of cardiac PET imaging with CardioPET (F-18 FCPHA) to SPECT imaging with technetium-labeled compounds for determining the presence and location of CAD. After having abnormal findings for clinically indicated SPECT scans, 24 subjects were given a single dose of CardioPET with either a comparable exercise test or at rest. The researchers then compared the SPECT and PET images with coronary angiography to assess diagnostic performance.
CardioPET produced significantly better image quality than the SPECT studies, said co-author and past ASNC president Dr. Gary Heller of Morristown Medical Center in Morristown, NJ, in a statement from FluoroPharma. In addition, CardioPET correctly identified ischemia in both exercise and pharmacologic stress studies, and it yielded comparable overall diagnostic accuracy to SPECT, he said.
"In this study, the unique fatty acid 'signal' for CardioPET was shown to detect both ischemia and myocardial infarction," Heller said in the statement. "We were particularly intrigued with abnormal CardioPET images in subjects who were injected at rest, yet still had evidence of CAD on angiography. This indicates that it may be feasible to find CAD without an exercise test, and certainly should be studied further."
