Abstract
The cardiac single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) is an important research topic because of the large clinical demand and the need for improving image quality. It usually suffers from low count sensitivity and poor spatial resolution due to patient radiation safety concerns. In this study, hybrid cardiac imaging integrating elliptical orbit SPECT (E-SPECT) with computed tomography (CT) is proposed to better obtain the anatomical and physiological information of the cardiac and vascular systems. The geometric structure of this proposed hybrid imaging system is similar to that of an ellipse, containing multiple detectors with slit-slat collimation. The hybrid imaging system utilizes the elliptical geometry and multi-detectors to improve the sensitivity and signal to noise ratio (SNR), and incorporates a CT scanner into the system to obtain an accurate attenuation mapping matrix of the patient for image reconstruction. The iterative reconstruction algorithm with some constraints is used to reconstruct images. The constraint-based body contour is introduced to deal with severely truncated data from E-SPECT. The feasibility and advantage of the system is validated by simulations. Simulation results show that it is optimal for system design and the quality of reconstructed images are greatly improved. With an optimal sampling coverage angle between 210° and 240°, the hybrid cardiac imaging system proposed in the paper can achieves significant improvements in image spatial resolution, SNR and image fidelity.
Highlights
Nuclear medicine has advanced to be a clinical and research discipline for assessing the function of normal and diseased tissues [1]
Considering the signal to noise ratio (SNR) and other hardware aspects of the model system, we propose that the coverage angle of the system should be a value between 210 and 240 on the premise of guaranteeing the quality of image reconstruction and balancing the performance of the proposed three parameters
The E-single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) for cardiac imaging can significantly increase the geometric efficiency for the central region, which is about two times higher than that of the dual-head SPECT system
Summary
Nuclear medicine has advanced to be a clinical and research discipline for assessing the function of normal and diseased tissues [1]. It can help doctors obtain structural and functional information about the tissue inside the human body. Single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) and positron emission tomography (PET) are considered as imaging techniques best suited to investigate organ function [2]. PET is superior to SPECT in terms of imaging quality and the effect of localizing the lesion. PET has a big drawback that it can use very few tracers, which limits the application of PET in different fields. The radionuclide used in SPECT has a longer physical half-life than
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