PET vs. SPECT: in the context of ongoing developments [review article]

ABSTRACT

This paper intends to compare the abilities of the two major imaging modalities in nuclear medicine imaging Positron Emission Tomography [PET] and Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography [SPECT]. The motivations are many-fold [i] To gain a better understanding of the strengths and limitations of the two imaging modalities in the context of recent and ongoing developments in hardware and software design; [ii] To emphasize that certain issues, historically and commonly thought as limitations, may now be instead viewed as challenges that can be addressed; [iii] To point out that existing PET and SPECT scanners in the field can [much] benefit from improvements in image-reconstruction software; [iii] To point-out [to engineers, physicists and software-developers] important areas of research in PET and SPECT imaging that will be instrumental to further improvements in the two modalities