Corrections for improved quantitative accuracy in SPECT and planar scintigraphic imaging

2 Cover illustration: The logarithm of a 123 I point spread function. The point source was simulated at 14.0 cm distance from the collimator in air, with the SIMIND version described in Paper V, using parameters corresponding to a GE Millennium MPR with 2.3 × 2.3 m 2 field of view. The grey scale is processed. To Björn, family and friends If you don't care where you are, you ain't lost. ABSTRACT A quantitative evaluation of single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) and planar scintigraphic imaging may be valuable for both diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. For an accurate quantification it is usually necessary to correct for attenuation and scatter and in some cases also for septal penetration. For planar imaging a background correction for the contribution from over-and underlying tissues is needed. In this work a few correction methods have been evaluated and further developed. Much of the work relies on the Monte Carlo method as a tool for evaluation and optimisation. A method for quantifying the activity of 125 I-labelled antibodies in a tumour inoculated in the flank of a mouse, based on planar scintigraphic imaging with a pin-hole collimator, has been developed and two different methods for background subtraction have been compared. The activity estimates of the tumours were compared with measurements in vitro. The major part of this work is attributed to SPECT. A method for attenuation and scatter correction of brain SPECT based on computed tomography (CT) images of the same patient has been developed, using an attenuation map calculated from the CT image volume. The attenuation map is utilised not only for attenuation correction, but also for scatter correction with transmission dependent convolution subtraction (TDCS). A registration method based on fiducial markers, placed on three chosen points during the SPECT examination, was evaluated. The scatter correction method, TDCS, was then optimised for regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) SPECT with 99m Tc, and was also compared with a related method, convolution scatter subtraction (CSS). TDCS has been claimed to be an iterative technique. This requires however some modifications of the method, which have been demonstrated and evaluated for a simulation with a point source. When the Monte Carlo method is used for evaluation of corrections for septal penetration, it is important that interactions in the collimator are taken into account. A new version of the Monte Carlo program SIMIND with this capability has been evaluated by …