Evaluation of a partial ring design for the INSERT SPECT/MRI system

Authors

Kell Erlandsson, University College London
Debora Slavado, University College London
Alexandre B. Bousse, University College London
Brian F. Hutton, University College London, University of Wollongong

RIS ID

106127

Publication Details

Erlandsson, K., Slavado, D., Bousse, A. & Hutton, B. (2015). Evaluation of a partial ring design for the INSERT SPECT/MRI system. EJNMMI Physics, 2 (Sup1), A47-A47. La Biodola, Isola d'Elba, Italy Proceedings of the 4th PSMR Conference on PET/MR and SPECT/MR

Abstract

The aim of the INSERT project is to develop a SPECT insert for a commercial MRI system, for performing simultaneous SPECT/MRI brain studies in humans. We have previously investigated various design options for the detector system, based on a complete ring of detectors. We are now considering a partial ring, due to space limitations. We have investigated the degradation in image quality with a partial ring as compared to a full ring, and the possibility of addressing the limitations by utilising MRI data during reconstruction. Noise-free data were generated by forward-projecting a cylindrical phantom with spherical inserts for a full-ring and a partial ring system, equipped with multislit- slat (MSS) and multi-pinhole (MPH) collimators. Poisson noise was added and images were reconstructed using ML-EM and MAP-EM with a smoothing prior and an anatomical prior. Contrast-recovery (CR) was calculated for the spheres in the lower part of the phantom compared to the top ones. Background CoV was also calculated. With noise-free data, CR was 77-84% for the MSS and 82-88% for the MPH partial-ring system with 400-1600 iterations. For noisy data and MAP-EM with a smoothing prior, CR was 78-80% and 81-82%, and CoV 22-28% and 26-31%, for the MSS and MPH systems, respectively. With the anatomical prior, CR was 85-89% and 87-91%, respectively. With the partial ring-systems, the transaxial resolution in the lower part of the image is reduced. The degradation is slightly larger with MSS than MPH collimators, but the MSS collimator results in a lower noise-level. Some resolution can be recovered with more iterations, but the improvement is limited when regularisation is included. The anatomical prior offers both qualitative and quantitative improvement in image quality.