Evaluation of reconstruction techniques in regional cerebral blood flow SPECT using trade-off plots: a Monte Carlo study.

Background And Aim: The image quality of single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) depends on the reconstruction algorithm used. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate parameters in ordered subset expectation maximization (OSEM) and to compare systematically with filtered back-projection (FBP) for reconstruction of regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) SPECT, incorporating attenuation and scatter correction.

Methods: The evaluation was based on the trade-off between contrast recovery and statistical noise using different sizes of subsets, number of iterations and filter parameters.

Regional cerebral blood flow in normal individuals aged 40, 75 and 88 years studied by 99Tc(m)-d,l-HMPAO SPET.

Age-related changes in cerebral blood flow (CBF) were examined with [99Tc(m)]-d,l-hexamethylpropylene amine oxime (HMPAO), using a single photon emission tomography (SPET) gamma camera system equipped with a high resolution collimator, in 33 normal individuals in three age groups: 40 years old (n = 11), 75 years old (n = 9) and 88 years old (n = 13). A standard activity of 1000 MBq [99Tc(m)]-d,l-HMPAO was administered. Regional CBF (rCBF) (relative to cerebellar counts) was quantified in 28 grey and white matter regions.

Attenuation correction in quantitative SPECT of cerebral blood flow: a Monte Carlo study.

Monte Carlo simulation has been used to produce projections from a voxel-based brain phantom, simulating a 99mTc-HMPAO single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) brain investigation. For comparison, projections free from the effects of attenuation and scattering were also simulated, giving ideal transaxial images after reconstruction. Three methods of attenuation correction were studied: (a) a pre-processing method, (b) a post-processing uniform method and (c) a post-processing non-uniform method using a density map.

Dual-window scatter correction and energy window setting in cerebral blood flow SPECT: a Monte Carlo study.

The image quality in SPECT studies of the regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) performed with 99mTc-HMPAO is degraded by scattered photons. The finite energy resolution of the gamma camera makes the detection of scattered photons unavoidable, and this is observed in the image as an impaired contrast between grey and white matter structures. In this work, a Monte Carlo simulated SPECT study of a realistic voxel-based brain phantom was used to evaluate the resulting contrast-to-noise ratio for a number of energy window settings, with and without the dual-window scatter correction.

Selection of collimator for rCBF studies and evaluation of triple-headed SPET using noise-resolution plots.

We investigated the effect of collimator selection on image quality in regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) studies of the brain performed with 99Tc(m)-HMPAO. A triple-headed SPET system (GE/CGR Neurocam) was used, together with three sets of parallel-hole collimators - general-purpose (GP), high-resolution (HR) and ultra-high-resolution (UHR). Two image quality parameters were used to describe the image quality, namely, noise and resolution.