Effects of voxel size and iterative reconstruction parameters on the spatial resolution of 99mTc SPECT/CT

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of voxel size and iterative reconstruction parameters on the radial and tangential resolution for 99mTc SPECT as a function of radial distance from isocenter. SPECT/CT scans of eight coplanar point sources of size smaller than 1 mm3 containing high concentration 99mTc solution were acquired on a SPECT/CT system with 5/8 inch NaI(Tl) detector and low-energy, high-resolution collimator. The tomographic projection images were acquired in step-and-shoot mode for 360 views over 360° with 250,000 counts per view, a zoom of 2.67, and an image matrix of 256 × 256 pixels that resulted in a 0.9 × 0.9 × 0.9 mm3 SPECT voxel size over 230 mm field-of-view. The projection images were also rebinned to image matrices of 128 × 128 and 64 × 64 to yield SPECT voxel sizes of 1.8 × 1.8 × 1.8 and 3.6 × 3.6 × 3.6 mm3, respectively. The SPECT/CT datasets were reconstructed using the vendor-supplied iterative reconstruction software that incorporated collimator-specific resolution recovery, CT-based attenuation correction, and dual-energy window-based scatter correction using different combinations of iterations and subsets. SPECT spatial resolution was estimated as the full width at half maximum of the radial and tangential profiles through the center of each point source in reconstructed SPECT images. Both radial and tangential resolution improved with higher iterations and subsets, and with smaller voxel sizes. Both radial and tangential resolution also improved with radial distance further away from isocenter. The magnitude of variation decreased for smaller voxel sizes and for higher number of iterations and subsets. Tangential resolution was found not to be equal to the radial resolution, and the nature of the anisotropy depended on the distribution of the radionuclide and on the reconstruction parameters used. The tangential resolution converged faster than the radial resolution, with higher iterations and subsets. SPECT resolution was isotropic and independent of radial distance when reconstructed using filtered back-projection. SPECT spatial resolution and therefore quantification of SPECT uptake via partial-volume correction in clinical images were found to depend on the nature of activity distribution within the SPECT field-of-view and on the specific choice of iterative reconstruction parameters.