Pareto optimization of SPECT acquisition and reconstruction settings for ¹⁷⁷Lu activity quantification

The aim was to investigate the noise and bias properties of quantitative ¹⁷⁷Lu-SPECT with respect to the number of projection angles, and the number of subsets and iterations in the OS-EM reconstruction, for different total acquisition times.

Experimental SPECT acquisition of six spheres in a NEMA body phantom filled with ¹⁷⁷Lu was performed, using medium-energy collimators and 120 projections with 180 s per projection. Bootstrapping was applied to generate data sets representing acquisitions with 20 to 120 projections for 10 min, 20 min, and 40 min, with 32 noise realizations per setting. Monte Carlo simulations were performed of ¹⁷⁷Lu-DOTA-TATE in an anthropomorphic computer phantom with three tumours (2.8 mL to 40.0 mL). Projections representing 24 h and 168 h post administration were simulated, each with 32 noise realizations. Images were reconstructed using OS-EM with compensation for attenuation, scatter, and distance-dependent resolution. The number of subsets and iterations were varied within a constrained range of the product number of iterations $$ number of projections $$ . Volumes-of-interest were defined following the physical size of the spheres and tumours, the mean activity-concentrations estimated, and the absolute mean relative error and coefficient of variation (CV) over noise realizations calculated. Pareto fronts were established by analysis of CV versus mean relative error.

Points at the Pareto fronts with low CV and high mean error resulted from using a low number of subsets, whilst points at the Pareto fronts associated with high CV but low mean error resulted from reconstructions with a high number of subsets. The number of projection angles had limited impact.

For accurate estimation of the ¹⁷⁷Lu activity-concentration from SPECT images, the number of projection angles has limited importance, whilst the total acquisition time and the number of subsets and iterations are parameters of importance.