Effect of patient thickness and scan duration on lesion detectability in PET oncology imaging

Phillip M. Cheng; Paul E. Kinahan; Claude Comtat; Carole Lartizien; Thomas K. Lewellen

doi:10.1117/12.595428

20 April 2005 Effect of patient thickness and scan duration on lesion detectability in PET oncology imaging

Phillip M. Cheng, Paul E. Kinahan, Claude Comtat, Carole Lartizien, Thomas K. Lewellen

Proceedings Volume 5745, Medical Imaging 2005: Physics of Medical Imaging; (2005) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.595428
Event: Medical Imaging, 2005, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

A dominant component of image quality for whole-body positron emission tomography (PET) imaging is attenuation, which is determined by patient thickness. This can be partially compensated for by adjusting scan duration. We evaluate the effect of changes in patient thickness and scan duration on lesion detection with model observers. We simulated 2D PET acquisitions of an anthropomorphic phantom with spherical target lesions. Three different anthropomorphic phantoms were used, with effective abdominal diameters of 20 cm, 27 cm, and 35 cm. The diameters of the lesions were varied from 1.0 to 3.0 cm, and the contrast ratios of the lesions were varied from 1.5 to 4.0. Noise-free scans were simulated with an analytical simulator. Poisson noise was added to simulate scan durations ranging from 1 to 10 minutes per bed position, using noise equivalent count rates previously measured using a modified NEMA NU2 countrate phantom. The average detectability of each target lesion under each condition was calculated using a non-prewhitening matched filter from 25 noisy realizations for each combination of parameters. Our results demonstrate the variation of the minimum scan duration required to detect a target of a given size and contrast ratio, for any fixed threshold of detectability. For image quality to remain constant for patients with larger cross-sectional areas, acquisition times should be increased accordingly, although in some cases this may not be possible due to practical constraints.

Citation Download Citation

Phillip M. Cheng, Paul E. Kinahan, Claude Comtat, Carole Lartizien, and Thomas K. Lewellen "Effect of patient thickness and scan duration on lesion detectability in PET oncology imaging", Proc. SPIE 5745, Medical Imaging 2005: Physics of Medical Imaging, (20 April 2005); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.595428

ACCESS THE FULL ARTICLE

INSTITUTIONAL
Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.

SELECT YOUR INSTITUTION

PERSONAL
Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.

PERSONAL SIGN IN

No SPIE Account? Create one

PURCHASE THIS CONTENT

SUBSCRIBE TO DIGITAL LIBRARY

50 downloads per 1-year subscription

Members: $195

Non-members: $335 ADD TO CART

25 downloads per 1 - year subscription

Members: $145

Non-members: $250 ADD TO CART

PURCHASE SINGLE ARTICLE

Includes PDF, HTML & Video, when available