Quantitative rotating multisegment slant-hole SPECT mammography with attenuation and collimator-detector response compensation.

Rotating multisegment slant-hole (RMSSH) single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) is suitable for detecting small and low-contrast breast lesions since it has much higher detection efficiency than conventional SPECT with a parallel-hole collimator and can image the breast at a closer distance. Our RMSSH SPECT reconstruction extends a previous rotation-shear transformation-based method to include nonuniform attenuation and collimator-detector response (CDR) compensation. To evaluate our reconstruction method, we performed two phantom simulation studies with 1) an isolated breast and 2) a breast phantom attached to the body torso. The reconstructed RMSSH SPECT images with attenuation and CDR compensation showed improved quantitative accuracy and less image artifacts than without. To evaluate the clinical efficacy of RMSSH SPECT mammography, we used a simulation study to compare with planar scintimammography in terms of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) value of a breast lesion. The RMSSH SPECT reconstruction images showed higher SNR value than the planar scintimammography images and even more so as we applied compensation for attenuation and collimator detector response. We conclude that attenuation and CDR compensation provide RMSSH SPECT mammography images with improved quality and quantitative accuracy.