Myocardial perfusion reserve index during adenosine stress magnetic resonance for the detection of coronary artery disease - ready for prime time?

In the work recently published in Cardiovascular Diagnosis and Therapy, Goykhman et al. (1) evaluated the inter- and intra-observer variability of myocardial perfusion reserve indexes (MPRI) during first-pass perfusion cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR). Studies were conducted on 20 adenosine stress studies of 10 female patients with stable angina and 10 healthy volunteers. Data analysis was performed using a commercially available software tool. The authors found that variations are present in measurement of MPRI observed in post processing of perfusion data. This may affect the diagnosis of inducible perfusion abnormalities and therefore the diagnostic classification and risk stratification of patients with suspected or known ischemic heart disease.