Does quantitative lung SPECT detect lung abnormalities earlier than lung function tests? : Results of a pilot study

Background: Heterogeneous ventilation in lungs of allergic individuals, cigarette smokers, asthmatics and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients has been demonstrated using imaging modalities such as PET, MR and SPECT. These individuals suffer from narrow and/or closed airways to various extents. By calculating regional heterogeneity in lung ventilation SPECT images as the coefficient of variation (CV) in small elements of the lung, heterogeneity maps and CV-frequency curves can be generated and used to quantitatively measure heterogeneity. This work explores the potential to use such measurements to detect mild ventilation heterogeneities in lung healthy subjects. Method: Fourteen healthy subjects without documented lung disease or respiratory symptoms, and two patients with documented airway disease, inhaled on average approximately 90 MBq 99mTc-Technegas immediately prior to the 20 min SPECT acquisition. Variation in activity uptake between subjects was compensated for in resulting CV values. The area under the compensated CV frequency curve (AUC), for CV values greater than a threshold value CVT, AUC(CV> CVT), was used as the measure of ventilation heterogeneity. Results: Patients with lung function abnormalities, according to lung function tests, generated higher AUC(CV>20%) values compared to healthy subjects (p=0.006). Strong linear correlations with the AUC(CV>20%) values were found for age (p=0.006) and height (p=0.001). These demonstrated that ventilation heterogeneities increased with age and that they depend on lung size. Strong linear correlations were found for the lung function value related to indices of airway closure/air trapping, RV/TLC (p=0.009), and DLCOc (p=0.009), a value partly related to supposed ventilation/perfusion mismatch. These findings support the association between conventional lung function tests and the AUC(CV>20%) value. Conclusions: Among the healthy subjects there is a group with increased AUC(CV>20%) values, but with normal lung function tests, which implies that it might be possible to differentiate ventilation heterogeneities earlier in a disease process than by lung function tests.On the date of the defence date of the Ph.D. Thesis the status of this article was Manuscript.