Influence of image reconstruction protocols on the image quality of a small animal PET scanner using 18F and 11C

• Autor(a) principal: João Vitor do Carmo Barbosa
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Outros Autores: Rodrigo Modesto Gadelha Gontijo, Guilherme Cavalcante de Albuquerque Souza, Bruno Melo Mendes, Juliana Batista da Silva, Marcelo Mamede, Andréa Vidal Ferreira
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da UFMG
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/1843/57386
• topic: Small Animal PET; Image Quality; NEMA NU 4-2008; Tomografia por Emissão de Pósitrons; Diagnóstico por Imagem

The small animal positron emission tomography (PET) scanner from Molecular Imaging Laboratory (LIM/CDTN) is dedicated to pre-clinical studies on new 18F and 11C-based radiopharmaceuticals and to the development of novel applications for traditional radiopharmaceuticals. Quality control tests recommended by the NEMA publication NU 4-2008 are routinely carried out to ensure the proper performance of the PET scanner. The aim of this work was to evaluate the influence of image reconstruction protocols on the image quality, accuracy of attenuation and scatter correction parameters for 18F and 11C PET images. 18F-FDG and 11C-PK1122 PET images of the image quality phantom were acquired and then reconstructed using different reconstruction protocols varying algorithms (FBP, MLEM-3D, OSEM-3D), resolution mode (high/standard) and number of iterations (10 to 150). Uniformity, spill-over ratio (SOR) and recovery coefficient (RC) tests were performed for each reconstructed image according to NEMA NU 4-2008. FBP based protocol generated noisier images compared to iterative algorithms (MLEM-3D or OSEM-3D) based protocols. The increase in the number of iterations resulted in higher standard deviation of the analyzed parameters for all images. MLEM-3D and OSEM-3D based protocols generates similar results when the number of iterations and resolution mode were identical. SOR and RC mean values remained stable when the number of iterations ranged from 40 to 150. This study allowed the evaluation of different image reconstruction protocols on important parameters of 18F and 11C PET image quality. Additionally, standard protocols to be adopted in LIM/CDTN for 18F and 11C images reconstruction in preclinical studies were defined.