Simulation-based reconstruction of absolute activities from the (99m)Tc/(111)In dual-isotope SPECT/CT: phantom...

We investigate the quantitative accuracy of the reconstruction of absolute (99m)Tc and (111)In activities from (99m)Tc/(111)In dual-isotope SPECT studies. The separate reconstruction of two images is achieved by applying Monte Carlo simulation-based corrections for self-scatter and cross-talk between energy windows. For method evaluation, a series of (99m)Tc/(111)In physical phantom experiments was performed using a clinical SPECT/CT camera. The containers were filled with different ratios of (99m)Tc and (111)In activities to create cross-talk with varying severity levels. In addition, we illustrate the performance of our method by reconstructing images from four simultaneous (99m)Tc/(111)In SPECT/CT studies of neuroendocrine patients. Similarly to the phantom experiments, clinical cases provide examples with different severity of cross-talk. Phantom experiments showed that Monte Carlo simulation-based corrections improved both quantitative accuracy and visual properties of (99m)Tc and (111)In images. While the errors of absolute activities for both tracers in six containers ranged from 16% to 75% if no corrections for self-scatter and cross-talk were applied, these errors decreased to below 10% when images were reconstructed with the aforementioned corrections. These activities were measured using regions of interest larger than the true sizes of the containers in order to account for the spill-out effect. Analysis of patient studies confirmed that accurate simulation-based compensations improved resolution and contrast for both (99m)Tc and (111)In images.