Adaptive bayesian iterative transmission reconstruction for attenuation correction in myocardial perfusion imaging with SPECT/slow-rotation low-output CT systems.

Ji Chen,Aharon Peretz,James R Galt,Ernest V Garcia,Russell D Folks

doi:10.1155/2007/18709

Abstract

Objectives. SPECT/slow-rotation low-output CT systems can produce streak artifacts in filtered backprojection (FBP) attenuation maps, impacting attenuation correction (AC) in myocardial perfusion imaging. This paper presents an adaptive Bayesian iterative transmission reconstruction (ABITR) algorithm for more accurate AC. Methods. In each iteration, ABITR calculated a three-dimensional prior containing the pixels with attenuation coefficients similar to water, then used it to encourage these pixels to the water value. ABITR was tested with a cardiac phantom and 4 normal patients acquired by a GE Millennium VG/Hawkeye system. Results. FBP AC and ABITR AC produced similar phantom results. For the patients, streak artifacts were observed in the FBP and ordered-subsets expectation-maximization (OSEM) maps but not in the ABITR maps, and ABITR AC produced more uniform images than FBP AC and OSEM AC. Conclusion. ABITR can improve the quality of the attenuation map, producing more uniform images for normal studies.

Highlights

Attenuation correction (AC) has undergone extensive clinical investigation [1,2,3,4] and now is a recommended technique for improving the quality of myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI) with single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) [5]
No statistically significant difference was found between filtered backprojection (FBP) AC and adaptive Bayesian iterative transmission reconstruction (ABITR) AC in the phantom studies
The ABITR AC images were barely significantly (P = .0547) more uniform at the basal region compared to the FBP AC images for the normal patient studies

Summary

Introduction

Attenuation correction (AC) has undergone extensive clinical investigation [1,2,3,4] and now is a recommended technique for improving the quality of myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI) with single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) [5]. These artifacts are produced by inconsistencies in the CT sinogram such as those caused by respiratory motion during the CT acquisition. It has become a serious concern that these streak artifacts may degrade the accuracy of AC, and essentially raise the probability of false-positive cases in clinical practice

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion