Body contour 180° pinhole SPET with or without tilted detector: a phantom study

This study investigated the feasibility of ordered subsets expectation maximisation (OS-EM) reconstruction of 180° pinhole single-photon emission tomography (SPET) acquired in body contour mode (variable distance between the detector and the axis of rotation for each projection) with or without a tilted detector head. Four non-circular orbits were designed bearing in mind the rotation radius and tilt angle values of previous pinhole SPET acquisitions in patients with circular orbits. The reconstructions were performed using a dedicated OS-EM algorithm. Reconstructed images of line and uniformity phantoms showed that the spatial and uniformity characteristics of the radioactive objects were preserved. In comparison with the circular orbits, the non-circular orbits allowed only a moderate gain (maximum 10%) in resolution. However, body contour pinhole SPET would significantly facilitate the camera set-up and in this way should decrease the camera set-up time, which is an important parameter in patient studies.