How and why to decrease statistical noise in routine nuclear medicine?

Statistical Poisson noise is one of the major factors degrading scintigraphic images. This is due to the random nature of the radioactive disintegration. The aim of this paper is to show the benefits of noise reduction using a dedicated software namely Statistical and Heuristic Image Noise Extraction (SHINE). First clinical validations are presented for reduction of acquisition duration in myocardial SPECT and for improvement of end-diastolic images in gated myocardial SPECT. Potential applications are illustrated. For example, the quality increase of bone scintigraphy, the systematic use of 128 x 128 image format in myocardial SPECT and the association of SHINE with scatter and attenuation corrections. In conclusion, this work confirms that the use of an efficient method to reduce statistical noise in nuclear medicine enables access to acquisition and processing modalities which are still largely under-exploited in clinical routine. (author)