How anatomical impairments found on CT affect perfusion percentage assessed by SPECT/CT scan?

Area of Science:

• Radiology
• Nuclear Medicine
• Medical Imaging Analysis

Background:

• Computed Tomography (CT) identifies lung structural changes and opacities.
• Nuclear medicine lung perfusion studies assess blood flow homogeneity.
• SPECT/CT combines anatomical and functional imaging for lung assessment.

Purpose of the Study:

• Develop a computer-aided method to quantify total lung perfusion using SPECT/CT.
• Compare quantified perfusion with parenchymal alterations from CT images.

Main Methods:

• Retrospective analysis of 39 SPECT/CT lung perfusion scans.
• Quantification of lung impairments and blood perfusion using 3D Slicer software.
• Comparison of 3D Slicer results (3D-TGP) with visual inspection of planar images (2D-TGP).

Main Results:

• A novel, semi-automatic method for quantifying total lung perfusion from SPECT/CT was developed.
• The 3D-TGP method showed a 7% bias and up to 67% variation compared to 2D-TGP.
• Perfusion showed weak positive correlations with lung infiltration and collapse.

Conclusions:

• A free, open-source software (3D Slicer) was utilized for quantifying lung perfusion via SPECT/CT.
• The relationship between parenchymal alterations and lung perfusion may be indirect, influenced by compensatory mechanisms.