Abstract
A technical comparison is described between two SPECT systems, one dedicated to cardiovascular studies and one general-purpose, to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of their use in an organ-specific clinical setting. The comparison was made between a dedicated cardiac SPECT (Alcyone, Discovery NM 530c, GE Healthcare) scanner and a general-purpose one (Discovery NM/CT 670 CZT, GE Healthcare). The two scanners differ in terms of hardware, mainly in the arrangement of the detectors and collimators, which are the main components of SPECT. A standard NEMA phantom was used to characterize the energy resolution, spatial resolution, and sensitivity for the two systems. Then, using a custom-made cardiac phantom, more specific indices were computed to evaluate the quality of cardiac images, such as signal-to-background noise ratio (SBNR), tissue-background contrast-to-noise ratio (TBCNR), and uniformity. Finally, the same indices were computed for clinical images acquired with the two systems from 11 subjects. Alcyone showed superior performance for dedicated cardiac imaging; however, its excellent qualities are aimed only at the study of the heart and only at patients with a low body-mass index, unlike Discovery NM/CT 670 CZT, which can be used for every anatomic district area and for every type of patient.
Highlights
Single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) is a tomographic imaging technique used in nuclear medicine that provides a sliced representation of a volumetric body region; it is based on the detection of single photons emitted by the decay of a radiopharmaceutical injected intravenously into the patient, which gathers in an organ or region of interest, allowing it to be viewed [1,2]
The two systems exploit the potential of the latest generation cadmium zinc telluride (CZT) detectors, but their spatial arrangement is different, as are the collimators and their arrangement in the head of the camera
Alcyone represents the standard for cardiac SPECT, and the results obtained in the tests carried out in the present work were clear proof of this
Summary
Single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) is a tomographic imaging technique used in nuclear medicine that provides a sliced representation of a volumetric body region; it is based on the detection of single photons emitted by the decay of a radiopharmaceutical injected intravenously into the patient, which gathers in an organ or region of interest, allowing it to be viewed [1,2]. The use of SPECT in the cardiovascular field is having more and more development, thanks to new technologies [6] that have made it possible to obtain gated images with very low tracer doses compared to the past and very short acquisition times [7,8,9,10]. Myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI) using SPECT is the most frequently performed nuclear cardiology procedure and provides a sensitive means for detection, localization, and risk stratification of coronary artery disease (CAD), assessment of left ventricular (LV) function, and myocardial viability [8]. Thanks to recent hardware and software developments, the use of SPECT in cardiology has enormously increased [11]
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