Abstract: Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT) allows one to visualize in 3D the distribution of radiotracers inside the human body and has long been recognized as a powerful diagnostic tool to investigate organ functions and changes in metabolism caused by disease processes. Currently, the clinical SPECT studies image only stationary activity distributions and the analysis of the resulting images is mainly qualitative. It is believed, however, that absolute quantitation of the data would yield greatly enhanced diagnostic accuracy of the tests. Further improvement could be achieved by using fully quantitative and dynamic functional SPECT imaging.

The talk will discuss basic principles of the SPECT data acquisition and image creation and will relate them to the underlying physical phenomena. The most important factors that limit data quantitation and appropriate corrections methods will be presented and quantitative and dynamic image reconstruction techniques will be reviewed. The results of simulations, phantom experiments and patient studies performed by the members of the Medical Imaging Research Group at the Vancouver Hospital and Health Sciences Centre will illustrate all topics in the presentation.