Abstract
Single-photon emission computed tomography has found an important place in preclinical cancer research. Nevertheless, the cameras dedicated to small animals are not widely available. The present study aimed to assess the feasibility of imaging small animals by a newly released 360° cadmium zinc telluride camera (VERITON, Spectrum Dynamics, Israel) dedicated to human patients. A cylindrical phantom containing hot spheres was used to evaluate the intrinsic performance of the camera first without the presence of background activity and then with two contrasts between background and hot spheres (1/4 and 1/10). Acquisitions were repeated with different scan durations (10 and 20min), two tested radioisotopes (Tc-99m and I-123), and a set of reconstruction parameters (10 iterations [i] 8 subsets [s], 10i16s, 10i32s). A 3D-printed phantom mimicking a rat with four subcutaneous tumours was then used to test the camera under preclinical conditions. The results obtained from the micro-hollow sphere phantom showed that it was possible to visualize spheres with an inner diameter of 3.95mm without background activity. Moreover, spheres with diameters of 4.95mm can be seen in the condition of high contrast between background and spheres (1/10) and 7.86mm with lower contrast (1/4). The rat-sized phantom acquisitions showed that 10- and 8-mm subcutaneous tumours were visible with a good contrast obtained for the two radioisotopes tested in this study. Both Tc-99m and I-123 measurements demonstrated that a 10-min acquisition reconstructed with an ordered subset expectation maximization algorithm applying 10i32s was optimal to obtain sufficient image quality in terms of noise, resolution, and contrast. Phantom results showed the ability of the system to detect sub-centimetre lesions for various radioisotopes. It seemed feasible to image small animals using a 360° cadmium zinc telluride gamma camera for preclinical cancer research purposes.
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