SPECT Quality Check Improvement

Single-Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT) devices are used for medical imaging, which consist of many mechanical elements and a complex data acquisition method. Therefore regular quality checks have to be performed to determine if the device operates optimally or not, or, in other words, to avoid unnecessary dose to the patients. One of these typical measurements are performed using a BAR phantom, where parallel lead stripes with different thickness and gap are placed between two plastic sheets. This phantom prevents the gamma photons to reach the detector where lead is placed, resulting a sine wave-like pattern on the acquired image. However, this pattern is usually evaluated by experts via a visual check only.

Previous studies [1] revealed that quantitative analysis of the BAR phantom images is useful, robust and reliable. The aim of this project is to develop a similar calculation method, which precisely determines the parameters of the lead pattern, and provides parameters which help to objectively decide if the camera system has the optimal image quality or not.

[1] An improved method for rapid objective measurement of gamma camera resolution, Hander et al.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1118/1.1328083

personal contact: balazs.szabo@mediso.com