[Usefulness of attenuation correction with transmission source in myocardial SPECT].

Attenuation correction in SPECT has been used for uniformly absorptive objects like the head. On the other hand, it has seldom been applied to nonuniform absorptive objects like the heart and surrounding lungs because of the difficulty and inaccuracy of data processing. However, since attenuation correction using a transmission source recently became practical, we were able to apply this method to a nonuniform absorptive object. Therefore, we evaluated the usefulness of this attenuation correction system with a transmission source in myocardial SPECT. The dose linearity, defect/normal ratio using a myocardial phantom, and myocardial count distribution in clinical cases was examined with and without the attenuation correction system. We found that all data processed with attenuation correction were better than those without attenuation correction. For example, in myocardial count distribution, while there was a difference between men and women without attenuation correction, which was considered to be caused by differences in body shape, after processing with attenuation correction, myocardial count distribution was almost the same in all cases. In conclusion, these results suggested that attenuation correction with a transmission source was useful in myocardial SPECT.

Evaluation of a commercial PET tomograph-based system for the quantitative assessment of rCBF, rOEF and rCMRO2 by using sequential administration of 15O-labeled compounds.

The purpose of this study was to develop a reliable and practical strategy that generates quantitative CBF and OEF maps accurately from PET data sets obtained with 15O-tracers. Sequential sinogram data sets were acquired after the administration of 15O-tracers, and combined single-frame images were obtained. The delay time between sampled input function and the brain was estimated from the H2(15)O study with the whole brain and the arterial time-activity curves (TACs). The whole-brain TACs were obtained from the reconstructed images (image-base method) and the sinogram data (sinogram-base method). Six methods were also evaluated for the dead-time and decay correction procedures in the process of generating a single-frame image from the dynamic sinogram. The estimated delay values were similar with both the sinogram-based and image-based methods. A lumped correction factor to a previously added single-frame sinogram caused an underestimation of CBF, OEF and CMRO2 by 16% at maximum, as compared with the correction procedure for a short sinogram. This suggested the need for a dynamic acquisition of a sinogram with a short interval. The proposed strategy provided an accurate quantification of CBF and OEF by PET with 15O-tracers.