In this renewal application, we continue our investigation of the fundamental limits on quantitative SPECT imaging and expand our scope to include PET. We complete our efforts in the area of special purpose collimation for brain SPECT imaging, and add new emphases in the areas of cardiac SPECT imaging and PET time-of-flight (TOF) imaging. Our goals remain two-fold: to develop quantitative task based metrics for system assessment, and to use these metrics to quantify the value of improvements to ECT imaging systems. In the proposed project period, we will focus on the most fundamental aspect of the imaging system, data acquisition, which determines the ultimate limits on quantitation. We will assess the merits of three recent hardware advances in terms of performance in estimation tasks related to Alzheimer disease, Parkinson disease, and cardiovascular disease. The brain and cardiac hardware improvements are each expected to provide about an order of magnitude improvement in sensitivity without compromising spatial resolution. Similarly, the addition of TOF information to PET imaging promises to provide substantial gains in image quality. It is extremely uncommon in relatively mature fields of medical imaging to discover new hardware modifications which promise to provide such a significant improvement. In the proposed research we will quantify the gains in estimation task performance to be expected for quantitative brain and cardiac imaging from these three advances, one of which emerged from the previous project period. We will manufacture a collimator, designed during the previous project period, which is expected to increase sensitivity of brain SPECT by, on average, a factor of 10. We will also assess the performance of a high-sensitivity dedicated cardiac SPECT system, and quantify the advantages of PET TOF information for both brain and cardiac applications. Bias and precision of estimates of activity concentration and kinetic parameters will be determined by analysis, simulation, and experiment. A range of clinically realistic noise levels will be considered, including noise levels at which we have previously shown that efficient estimation of nonlinear parameters is not possible.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01EB000802-18
Application #
8063905
Study Section
Biomedical Imaging Technology Study Section (BMIT)
Program Officer
Sastre, Antonio
Project Start
1993-08-01
Project End
2013-09-30
Budget Start
2011-04-01
Budget End
2013-09-30
Support Year
18
Fiscal Year
2011
Total Cost
$546,746
Indirect Cost
Name
Brigham and Women's Hospital
Department
Type
DUNS #
030811269
City
Boston
State
MA
Country
United States
Zip Code
02115
Park, Mi-Ae; Kijewski, Marie Foley; Keijzers, Ronnie et al. (2016) Introduction of a novel ultrahigh sensitivity collimator for brain SPECT imaging. Med Phys 43:4734
Sitek, Arkadiusz; Moore, Stephen C (2013) Evaluation of imaging systems using the posterior variance of emission counts. IEEE Trans Med Imaging 32:1829-39
Park, Mi-Ae; Moore, Stephen C; Müller, Stefan P et al. (2013) Performance of a high-sensitivity dedicated cardiac SPECT scanner for striatal uptake quantification in the brain based on analysis of projection data. Med Phys 40:042504
Sitek, Arkadiusz (2012) Data analysis in emission tomography using emission-count posteriors. Phys Med Biol 57:6779-95
Moore, Stephen C; Southekal, Sudeepti; Park, Mi-Ae et al. (2012) Improved regional activity quantitation in nuclear medicine using a new approach to correct for tissue partial volume and spillover effects. IEEE Trans Med Imaging 31:405-16
Southekal, Sudeepti; McQuaid, Sarah J; Kijewski, Marie Foley et al. (2012) Evaluation of a method for projection-based tissue-activity estimation within small volumes of interest. Phys Med Biol 57:685-701
McQuaid, Sarah J; Southekal, Sudeepti; Kijewski, Marie Foley et al. (2011) Joint optimization of collimator and reconstruction parameters in SPECT imaging for lesion quantification. Phys Med Biol 56:6983-7000
Sitek, Arkadiusz (2011) Reconstruction of emission tomography data using origin ensembles. IEEE Trans Med Imaging 30:946-56
Park, Mi-Ae; Zimmerman, Robert E; Taberner, Andrew et al. (2008) Design and fabrication of phantoms using stereolithography for small-animal imaging systems. Mol Imaging Biol 10:231-6
Ouyang, Jinsong; El Fakhri, Georges; Moore, Stephen C (2008) Improved activity estimation with MC-JOSEM versus TEW-JOSEM in 111In SPECT. Med Phys 35:2029-40

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