Impact of quantitative index derived from 123I-FP-CIT-SPECT on reconstruction with correction methods evaluated using a 3D-striatum digital brain phantom.

We evaluated quantitation accuracy of the specific binding ratio (SBR) and specific uptake ratio (SUR) of dopamine transporter for various correction methods by using a novel three-dimensional striatum digital brain (3D-SDB) phantom comprised of segments containing the striatum, ventricle, brain parenchyma, and skull bone extracted from T2-weighted MR images. A process image was reconstructed by projection data sets with blurring, scatter, and attenuation from 3D-SDB phantom data. A 3D-iterative reconstruction algorithm was used without correction (OSEM), or with scatter (SC), attenuation (AC), AC + SC (ACSC), AC + resolution recovery (RR; ACRR), SC + RR (SCRR), AC + SC + RR (ACSCRR), AC + SC + RR + partial volume (PVC; ACSCRRP), and AC + SC + RR + PVC + ventricle (ACSCRRPV). Data were then quantified using SBR and SUR. Differences between measured and true SBR values were (in order): ACSCRR < ACSC < ACRR < AC < SCRR < SC < OSEM: the maximal error was 45.3%. The trend of differences between measured and true SUR values was similar to that of SBR; maximal error was 65%. The ACSCRR-corrected SUR, which was closer to the true value, was underestimated by 30.4%. However, the ACSCRRP-corrected SUR was underestimated by a maximum of 22.5%. The SUR in the ACSCRRPV was underestimated by 6.2%. The accuracy of quantitation was improved using various types of compensation and correction. Accuracy improved more for the SUR when PVC and ventricle correction were added.