New workflows and algorithms of bone scintigraphy based on SPECT-CT.

  • Peter Bandi
  • Norbert Zsoter
  • Andras Wirth
  • Ulf Luetzen
  • Thorsten Derlin
  • Laszlo Papp

Abstract

Gold standard bone scintigraphy workflow contains acquisition of planar anterior and posterior images and if necessary, additional SPECTs as well. Planar acquisitions are time consuming and not enough for accurately locating hotspots. Current paper proposes a novel workflow for fast whole body bone SPECT scintigraphy. We present a novel stitching method to generate a whole body SPECT based on the SPECT projections. Our stitching method is performed on the projection series not on the reconstructed SPECTs, thus stitching artifacts are greatly reduced. Our workflow does not require any anterior-posterior image pairs, since these images are derived from the reconstructed whole body SPECT automatically. Our stitching method has been validated on real clinical data performed by medical physicians. Results show that our method is very effective for whole body SPECT generations leaving no signs of artifacts. Our workflow required overall 16 minutes to acquire a whole body SPECT which is comparable to the 60 minutes acquisition time required for gold standard techniques including planar images and additional SPECT acquisitions.

Bibliographical data

Original languageEnglish
ISSN1557-170X
Publication statusPublished - 2012
pubmed 23367289