Evaluation and optimization of CT-based attenuation correction in myocardial perfusion tomographic imaging / Taher Hosny Abdelhamid Ali ; Supervised Wael M. Elshemey , Magdy M. Khalil , Abdo A. Elfiky

Thesis (M.Sc.) - Cairo University - Faculty of Science - Department of Biophysics

SPECT myocardial perfusion imaging (SPECT MPI) is a widely used and well-established method for the evaluation of patients with known or suspected coronary artery disease (CAD). The integration of SPECT and CT (low-dose multi-slice CT) can improve the quality of MPI by enabling attenuation correction from CT-mapping of the thorax. Collimator depth dependent, tissue attenuation, and scattered photons are the main image degrading factors in nuclear medicine procedures. Recently, iterative reconstruction algorithms include corrections in the clinical procedures, thus improving imaging quality and diagnostic accuracy. To evaluate the impact of iterative reconstruction corrected for attenuation, scatter and collimator depth dependent, cardiac phantom of 110 ml volume and wall thickness of 10mm was used. Further, two solid defects (transmural 45{u00B0}x 1.5 cm and non-transmural 60{u00B0}x 2 cm and 5 mm wall thickness) was inserted and the whole phantom located inside available cylindrical phantom. Clinically relevant activity was injected into myocardium walls and background. Clinical standard protocol was performed with SPECT imaging scan. Different acquisition parameters (e.g. time/projection and number of projections) were applied. Reconstruction was done applying conventional method and iterative reconstruction with different combination of corrections. Figures of merit were used to evaluate MPI image quality

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