Improved lesion detection from spatially adaptive, minimally complex, Pixon reconstruction of planar scintigraphic images.

Pixon noise reduction was applied to 18 planar images, six each from 99mTc-methylene diphosphonate (99mTc-MDP), 67Ga citrate (67Ga), and (123)I-metaiodobenzylguanidine ((123)I-MIBG) studies. Pixon processing increased patient signal-to-noise ratio, 6.8-11.8 fold. Three specialists preferred processed images 44 of 54 times with good agreement (87%). Most (9/10, p<0.02) of the null and negative preferences were from (123)I-MIBG studies. Inter-rater association was shown for 1-4 scale rated artifact p<0.1, noise p<0.01 and lesion detection p<0.05. Pixon images had superior lesion detection ability, p<0.02, and noise levels, p<0.02 and no statistically significant change in artifacts.