Human-observer LROC study of lesion detection in Ga-67 SPECT images reconstructed using MAP with anatomical priors.
We compare the image quality of SPECT reconstruction with and without an anatomical prior. Area under the localization-response operating characteristic (LROC) curve is our figure of merit. Simulated Ga-67 citrate images, a SPECT lymph-nodule imaging agent, were generated using the MCAT digital phantom. Reconstructed images were read by human observers.Several reconstruction strategies are compared, including rescaled block iterative (RBI) and maximum-a-posteriori (MAP) with various priors. We find that MAP reconstruction using prior knowledge of organ and lesion boundaries significantly improves lesion-detection performance (p < 0.05). Pseudo-lesion boundaries, regions without increased uptake which are incorrectly treated as prior knowledge of lesion boundaries, do not decrease performance.
Lehovich
Andre
A
Division of Nuclear Medicine, Department of Radiology, University of Massachusetts Medical School, 55 Lake Ave N., Worcester, MA, 01655 USA (email: Andre.Lehovich@umassmed.edu ).
Bruyant
Philippe P
PP
Gifford
Howard C
HC
Schneider
Peter B
PB
Squires
Shane
S
Licho
Robert
R
Gindi
Gene
G
King
Michael A
MA