Variable linesource response in attenuation corrected cardiac SPECT

Full text: Varying line source response can result in errors due to the reference scan being inappropriate. The incidence of this problem and its effect on cardiac perfusion SPECT was investigated. Acquisitions of transmission data without the bed or a patient were used to determine the variation in global sensitivity and uniformity of the transmission with respect to camera position over a period of 4 months. The average variations for various parameters were: Influence of variations in regional sensitivity on the reconstructed attenuation map and ultimately the patient study was investigated. Counts in selected sections of patient transmission images were reduced by 5 to 30 percent and then reconstructed in the patient study with iterative reconstruction for 30 iterations (Butterworth 0.66 nyquist frequency order 10). The reconstructed scans were compared to the original study which had minimal linesource misalignment and the percentage differences were calculated to determine the effect of regional sensitivity differences with angle. At the level of variation of regional sensitivity (5-10%) it was found data varied by up to 20% in portions of the patient myocardium compared to the original data. Additional line source quality control is essential and variation in transmission counts with rotation minimised. Copyright (2002) The Australian and New Zealand Society of Nuclear Medicine Inc