Abstract
Purpose
We compared the performance of three commercial small-animal μSPECT scanners equipped with multipinhole general purpose (GP) and multipinhole high-resolution (HR) collimators designed for imaging mice.
Methods
Spatial resolution, image uniformity, point source sensitivity and contrast recovery were determined for the U-SPECT-II (MILabs), the NanoSPECT-NSO (BioScan) and the X-SPECT (GE) scanners. The pinhole diameters of the HR collimator were 0.35 mm, 0.6 mm and 0.5 mm for these three systems respectively. A pinhole diameter of 1 mm was used for the GP collimator. To cover a broad field of imaging applications three isotopes were used with various photon energies: 99mTc (140 keV), 111In (171 and 245 keV) and 125I (27 keV). Spatial resolution and reconstructed image uniformity were evaluated in both HR and a GP mode with hot rod phantoms, line sources and a uniform phantom. Point source sensitivity and contrast recovery measures were additionally obtained in the GP mode with a novel contrast recovery phantom developed in-house containing hot and cold submillimetre capillaries on a warm background.
Results
In hot rod phantom images, capillaries as small as 0.4 mm with the U-SPECT-II, 0.75 mm with the X-SPECT and 0.6 mm with the NanoSPECT-NSO could be resolved with the HR collimators for 99mTc. The NanoSPECT-NSO achieved this resolution in a smaller field-of-view (FOV) and line source measurements showed that this device had a lower axial than transaxial resolution. For all systems, the degradation in image resolution was only minor when acquiring the more challenging isotopes 111In and 125I. The point source sensitivity with 99mTc and GP collimators was 3,984 cps/MBq for the U-SPECT-II, 620 cps/MBq for the X-SPECT and 751 cps/MBq for the NanoSPECT-NSO. The effects of volume sensitivity over a larger object were evaluated by measuring the contrast recovery phantom in a realistic FOV and acquisition time. For 1.5-mm rods at a noise level of 8 %, the contrast recovery coefficient (CRC) was 42 %, 37 % and 34 % for the U-SPECT-II, X-SPECT and NanoSPECT-NSO, respectively. At maximal noise levels of 10 %, a CRCcold of 70 %, 52 % and 42 % were obtained for the U-SPECT-II, X-SPECT and NanoSPECT-NSO, respectively. When acquiring 99mTc with the GP collimators, the integral/differential uniformity values were 30 %/14 % for the U-SPECT-II, 50 %/30 % for the X-SPECT and 38 %/25 % for the NanoSPECT-NSO. When using the HR collimators, these uniformity values remained similar for U-SPECT-II and X-SPECT, but not for the NanoSPECT-NSO for which the uniformity deteriorated with larger volumes.
Conclusion
We compared three μSPECT systems by acquiring and analysing mouse-sized phantoms including a contrast recovery phantom built in-house offering the ability to measure the hot contrast on a warm background in the submillimetre resolution range. We believe our evaluation addressed the differences in imaging potential for each system to realistically image tracer distributions in mouse-sized objects.
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the University of Antwerp, the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO), the Belgian Science Policy Office (BELSPO), iMinds and Ghent University. The authors would like to thank Peter Laverman of Radboud University Nijmegen, Ruud Ramakers of the University Medical Center Utrecht, Ciara Finucane and Jerome Burnet of Queen Mary, University of London, and Alessandro Passeri of the University of Florence for their cooperation and technical assistance with, respectively, the U-SPECT-II, the NanoSPECT-NSO and the X-SPECT measurements.
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S.D. performed and analysed the experiments, took part in the phantom design and construction, contributed to the writing and made all the figures. R.V.H. performed the X-SPECT experiments, contributed to the phantom design, the experimental setup and proofreading. J.V. took part in the experimental setup, image analysis and proofreading. S.V.D.B. contributed to the initial experimental setup and took part in the proofreading. Si.St. provided the motivation for the introduction of μSPECT for the investigation of antibodies and peptides in preference to μPET and contributed to the proofreading, St.St. set up the framework, originated and contributed to the phantom design, designed the experimental setups, and took part in the writing, discussion and proofreading.
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Deleye, S., Van Holen, R., Verhaeghe, J. et al. Performance evaluation of small-animal multipinhole μSPECT scanners for mouse imaging. Eur J Nucl Med Mol Imaging 40, 744–758 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00259-012-2326-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00259-012-2326-2