EFFICACY OF ORAL DIPYRIDAMOLE CINEMAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING IN DETECTING CORONARY-ARTERY DISEASE - INITIAL EXPERIENCE

Exercise or dipyridamole (DP) thallium-201 perfusion imaging is a wide ly accepted stress technique for the early detection of coronary arter y disease. An alternative to perfusion imaging is the assessment of re gional left ventricular function, which is felt to reflect the earlies t signs of subendocardial and transmural ischemia. We examined 13 pati ents with angiographically documented coronary artery disease (greater -than-or-equal-to 70% diameter stenosis) using cine-magnetic resonance imaging (C-MRI) before and after DP administration. Angiographic find ings of the 3 major coronary arteries were compared with segmental wal l motion and systolic wall thickening of the related left ventricular myocardial segments. The 39 left ventricular segments evaluated in the se 13 patients demonstrated a 95% sensitivity (p < 0.01) and a 100% sp ecificity (p > 0.05) when post-DP C-MRI results were assessed. In 4 pa tients, it was not possible to assess systolic wall thickening because of motion artifacts, but wall motion analysis with the cine-loop disp lay was still possible. There was a trend toward superiority utilizing the qualitative cine-method rather than that of quantitative systolic wall tickening. DP C-MRI appears to be a promising method for the eva luation of left ventricular cardiac function.