Comparison of yttrium-90 quantitative imaging by TOF and non-TOF PET in a phantom of liver selective internal radiotherapy.

The aim of this study is to determine the feasibility of achieving quantitative measurement in (90)Y-microspheres liver selective internal radiotherapy (SIRT) by imaging (90)Y with a conventional non-time of flight (TOF) PET device. Instead of the bremsstrahlung x-rays of the ß-decay, the low branch of e(-)- e(+) pair production in the (90)Y-decay was used. The activity distribution in a phantom-simulated liver SIRT was obtained by direct (90)Y-PET imaging. We tested a LYSO TOF PET and two GSO and BGO non-TOF PET scanners using a 3.6-l cylindrical phantom filled with the (90)Y solution containing two sets of hot and cold spheres. The best hot contrast was obtained with the LYSO TOF. It was close to the expected value and remained constant, even for short acquisition times. The LYSO non-TOF was about 10% lower. The GSO performed similarly but degraded for shorter times whilst the BGO was the worst with 40% loss. For the cold spheres, the LYSO TOF and the GSO provided the best results, while the LYSO non-TOF and the BGO were the worst. (90)Y PET imaging in liver SIRT is achievable with LYSO TOF. Conventional LYSO and GSO show a loss of contrast and require longer acquisition times. BGO imaging is not feasible for dosimetry calculation.

4-Step renal dosimetry dependent on cortex geometry applied to 90Y peptide receptor radiotherapy: evaluation using a fillable kidney phantom imaged by 90Y PET.

UNLABELLED: Accurate dosimetry in (90)Y peptide receptor radionuclide therapy (PRRT) helps to optimize the injected activity, to prevent kidney or red marrow toxicity, while giving the highest absorbed dose to tumors. The aim of this study was to evaluate whether direct (90)Y bismuth germanate or lutetium yttrium orthosilicate time-of-flight PET was accurate enough to provide dosimetry estimates suitable to (90)Y PRRT. METHOD: To overcome the statistical uncertainty arising from the low (90)Y positron counting rate, the computation of the cortex mean-absorbed dose was divided into 4 steps: delineation of the cortex volume of interest (VOI) on the CT scan, determination of the recovery coefficient from the cortex VOI using the point-spread function of the whole imaging process, determination of the mean cortex-absorbed dose per unit cumulated activity in the cortex (S(cortex←cortex) value) from the cortex VOI using a (90)Y voxel S value kernel, and determination of the number of decays in the cortex VOI from the PET reconstruction. Our 4-step method was evaluated using an anthropomorphic abdominal phantom containing a fillable kidney phantom based on the MIRD kidney model. Vertebrae with an attenuation similar to that of bone were also modeled. Two tumors were modeled by 7-mL hollow acrylic spheres and the spleen by a plastic bag. Activities corresponded to typical tissue uptake in a first (90)Y-DOTATOC cycle of 4.4 GBq, considered as free of significant renal toxicity. Eight successive 45-min scans were acquired on both systems. RESULTS: Both PET systems were successful in determining absorbed dose to modeled tumors but failed to provide accurate red marrow dosimetry. Renal cortex dosimetry was reproducible for both PET systems, with an accuracy of 3% for the bismuth germanate system but only 18% for the lutetium yttrium orthosilicate time-of-flight system, which was hindered by the natural radioactivity of the crystal, especially in the most attenuated area of the kidney. CONCLUSION: This study supports the use of direct (90)Y PET of the first PRRT cycle to assess the kidney-absorbed dose and optimize the injected activity of the following cycles.

Feasibility of 90Y TOF PET-based dosimetry in liver metastasis therapy using SIR-Spheres.

PURPOSE: (90)Y-labelled compounds used in targeted radiotherapy are usually imaged with SPECT by recording the bremsstrahlung X-rays of the beta decay. The continuous shape of the X-ray spectrum induces the presence of a significant fraction of scatter rays in the acquisition energy window, reducing the accuracy of biodistribution and of dosimetry assessments. METHODS: The aim of this paper is to use instead the low branch of e(-) e(+) pair production in the (90)Y decay. After administration of (90)Y-labelled SIR-Spheres by catheterization of both liver lobes, the activity distribution is obtained by (90)Y time-of-flight (TOF) PET imaging. The activity distribution is convolved with a dose irradiation kernel in order to derive the regional dosimetry distribution. RESULTS: Evaluation on an anatomical phantom showed that the method provided an accurate dosimetry assessment. Preliminary results on a patient demonstrated a high-resolution absorbed dose distribution with a clear correlation with tumour response. CONCLUSION: This supports the implementation of (90)Y PET in selective internal radiation therapy of the liver.

Optimization of time-of-flight reconstruction on Philips GEMINI TF.

PURPOSE: The aim of this study is to optimize different parameters in the time-of-flight (TOF) reconstruction for the Philips GEMINI TF. The use of TOF in iterative reconstruction introduces additional variables to be optimized compared to conventional PET reconstruction. The different parameters studied are the TOF kernel width, the kernel truncation (used to reduce reconstruction time) and the scatter correction method. METHODS: These parameters are optimized using measured phantom studies. All phantom studies were acquired with a very high number of counts to limit the effects of noise. A high number of iterations (33 subsets and 3 iterations) was used to reach convergence. The figures of merit are the uniformity in the background, the cold spot recovery and the hot spot contrast. As reference results we used the non-TOF reconstruction of the same data sets. RESULTS: It is shown that contrast recovery loss can only be avoided if the kernel is extended to more than 3 standard deviations. To obtain uniform reconstructions the recommended scatter correction is TOF single scatter simulation (SSS). This also leads to improved cold spot recovery and hot spot contrast. While the daily measurements of the system show a timing resolution in the range of 590­600 ps, the optimal reconstructions are obtained with a TOF kernel full-width at half-maximum (FWHM) of 650­700 ps. The optimal kernel width seems to be less critical for the recovered contrast but has an important effect on the background uniformity. Using smaller or wider kernels results in a less uniform background and reduced hot and cold contrast recovery. CONCLUSION: The different parameters studied have a large effect on the quantitative accuracy of the reconstructed images. The optimal settings from this study can be used as a guideline to make an objective comparison of the gains obtained with TOF PET versus PET reconstruction.