Recent advances in cardiac SPECT instrumentation and imaging methods.

Recent advances in cardiac SPECT instrumentation and imaging methods. Phys Med Biol. 2019 Feb 06;: Authors: Wu J, Liu C Abstract Cardiac SPECT continues to play a critical role in detecting and managing cardiovascular disease, in particularly coronary artery disease (CAD) (Jaarsma et al., 2012; Agostini et al., 2016). While conventional dual-head SPECT scanners using parallel-hole collimators and scintillation crystals with photomultiplier tubes are still the workhorse of cardiac SPECT, they have the limitations of low photon sensitivity (~130 count s-1 MBq-1), poor image resolution (~15 mm) (Imbert et al., 2012), relatively long acquisition time, inefficient use of the detector, high radiation dose, etc. Recently our field observed an exciting growth of new developments of dedicated cardiac scanners and collimators, as well as novel imaging algorithms for quantitative cardiac SPECT. These developments have opened doors to new applications with potential clinical impact, including ultra-low-dose imaging, absolute quantification of myocardial blood flow (MBF) and coronary flow reserve (CFR), multi-radionuclide imaging, and improved image quality as a result of attenuation, scatter, motion, and partial volume corrections. In this article, we review the recent advances in cardiac SPECT instrumentation and imaging methods. This review mainly focuses on the most recent developments published since 2012 and points to the future of cardiac ...
Source: Physics in Medicine and Biology - Category: Physics Authors: Tags: Phys Med Biol Source Type: research