Implementation of xSPECT, xSPECT bone and Broadquant from literature, clinical survey and innovative phantom study with task-based image quality assessment.

Objective: From patient and phantom studies, we aimed to highlight an original implementation process and share a two-years experience clinical feedback on xSPECT (xS), xSPECT Bone (xB) and Broadquant quantification (Siemens) for Tc-bone and Lu-NET (neuroendocrine tumors) imaging.

Methods: Firstly, we checked the relevance of implemented protocols and Broadquant module on the basis of literature and with a homogeneous phantom study respectively. Then, we described xS and xB behaviours with reconstruction parameters (10i-0mm to 40i-20mm) and optimized the protocols through a blinded survey (7 physicians).

Early-phase pelvic bone SPECT: Simulation and comparison of several acquisition protocols to reduce bladder artifact and improve image quality.

Tomoscintigraphic reconstruction in nuclear medicine assumes that the distribution of the tracer is unchanged in the volume of interest throughout the duration of the acquisition. This condition is however not met in early-phase bone scintigraphy and early-phase pelvic SPECT may display helical artifacts due to the filling of the bladder. Those artifacts may hamper proper interpretation of surrounding bone areas.

A no-reference respiratory blur estimation index in nuclear medicine for image quality assessment.

Few indexes are available for nuclear medicine image quality assessment, particularly for respiratory blur assessment. A variety of methods for the identification of blur parameters has been proposed in literature mostly for photographic pictures but these methods suffer from a high sensitivity to noise, making them unsuitable to evaluate nuclear medicine images. In this paper, we aim to calibrate and test a new blur index to assess image quality.

Data-driven respiratory gating for ventilation/perfusion lung scan.

Background: Ventilation/perfusion lung scan is subject to blur due to respiratory motion whether with planar acquisition or single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT). We propose a data-driven gating method for extracting different respiratory phases from lung scan list-mode or dynamic data.

Methods: The algorithm derives a surrogate respiratory signal from an automatically detected diaphragmatic region of interest.

Prognostic value of (18)F-FDG PET/CT metabolic parameters in metastatic differentiated thyroid cancers.

Purpose: To evaluate the prognostic value of F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (FDG PET) with quantitative analysis using metabolic parameters in metastatic differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC).

Materials And Methods: The FDG-PET scans of 37 patients with metastatic DTC were studied retrospectively. The number of FDG-avid lesions, the SUVmax, the SULpeak of the lesion with the highest FDG uptake, the overall metabolic tumor volume (MTV), and the total lesion glycolysis (TLG) were measured.