Abstract
Purpose: The aim of this study was to assess image quality and lesion detectability acquired with a digital Positron Emission Tomography/Computed Tomography (PET/CT) Siemens Biograph Vision 600 system.Material and Methods: Consecutive patients who underwent a FDG PET/CT during the first week of use of a digital PET/CT (Siemens Biograph Vision 600) at the nuclear medicine department of the university hospital of Brest were analyzed. PET were realized using list mode acquisition. For all patients, 4 datasets were reconstructed. We determined, according to phantom measurements, an equivalent time acquisition/reconstruction parameters pair of the digital PET/CT corresponding to an analog PET/CT image quality (“analog-like”) as reference dataset. We compared the reference dataset with 3 others digital PET/CT reconstruction parameters, allowing a decrease of emission duration: 60, 90, and 120 s per bed position. Three nuclear medicine physicians evaluated independently, for each dataset, overall image quality [Maximal Intensity Projection (MIP), noise, sharpness] using a 4-point scale. Physicians assessed also lesion detection capability by reporting new visible lesions on each digital datasets with their confidence level in comparison with analog-like dataset.Results: Ninety-eight patients were analyzed. Image quality of MIP (IQMIP), sharpness (IQSHARPNESS), and noise (IQNOISE) of all digital datasets (60, 90, and 120 s) were better than those evaluated with analog-like reconstruction. Moreover, digital PET/CT system improved IQMIP, IQNOISE, and IQSHARPNESS whatever the BMI. Lesion detection capability and confidence level were higher for 60, 90, 120 s per bed position, respectively, than for analog-like images.Conclusion: Our study demonstrated an improvement of image quality and lesion detectability with a digital PET/CT system.
Highlights
Positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) is a widely used multimodality imaging method that provides metabolic information for oncological and nononcological disease management [1]
The aim of this study was to assess image quality and lesion detectability acquired with a digital Positron Emission Tomography/Computed Tomography (PET/CT) Siemens Biograph Vision 600 system
Our study demonstrated an improvement of image quality and lesion detectability with a digital PET/CT system
Summary
Positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) is a widely used multimodality imaging method that provides metabolic information for oncological and nononcological disease management [1]. New type of PET detectors, silicon photomultiplier (SiPM)-based detectors, has been recently developed [6,7,8] as a key innovation replacing conventional photomultipliers (PMT). Integration of SiPM in PET/CT scanners enabled the development of digital PET/CT scanners, replacing conventional analog PET/CT scanners. The improvement in time resolution lead to more efficient TOF reconstructions with a very fast convergence and noiseless images [10] with high effective sensitivity in regards to PMT systems. The sensitivity improvement gave the opportunity to design smaller crystal pixels leading to a better spatial resolution. Based on phantom studies that were recently published using digital PET systems [6, 11], it has been demonstrated that digital PET outperforms analog PET in terms of spatial resolution and sensitivity. To our knowledge, data on the comparison of digital PET and analog PET in terms of image quality and diagnostic confidence in patients undergoing PET/CT is scarce [12,13,14]
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