title: Selection of collimator for rCBF studies and evaluation of triple-headed SPET using noise-resolution plots.
abstract: 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. Noise was measured in experimental and Monte-Carlo simulated SPET studies of a cylinder phantom of uniform activity as the pixel root mean square error (RMS) and as the coefficient of variation (CV) of quantitative rCBF values. Resolution was measured as full-width at half-maximum in experimental SPET studies of a line-source. Plots of noise versus resolution for the different collimators were obtained by varying the cut-off frequency of the Hanning filter applied in the reconstruction of transaxial slices. From these noise-resolution plots, we were able to determine which collimator gave the best resolution for a specific noise level. A lowest reasonable noise level may be established by comparison with the inter-observer CV of the quantification method.
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiation Physics, Sahlgren Hospital, Göteborg, Sweden.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Arlig
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Jacobsson
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Larsson
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ljungberg
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Wikkelsö
mesh_terms: D001921:Brain / Q000098:blood supply* / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D002560:Cerebrovascular Circulation; D006801:Humans; D019047:Phantoms, Imaging; D012039:Regional Blood Flow; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D019690:Technetium Tc 99m Exametazime; D015899:Tomography, Emission-Computed, Single-Photon / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods*
chemical_list: D019690:Technetium Tc 99m Exametazime