Quantitative Monte Carlo-based holmium-166 SPECT reconstruction.

PURPOSE Quantitative imaging of the radionuclide distribution is of increasing interest for microsphere radioembolization (RE) of liver malignancies, to aid treatment planning and dosimetry. For this purpose, holmium-166 ((166)Ho) microspheres have been developed, which can be visualized with a gamma camera. The objective of this work is to develop and evaluate a new reconstruction method for quantitative (166)Ho SPECT, including Monte Carlo-based modeling of photon contributions from the full energy spectrum. METHODS A fast Monte Carlo (MC) simulator was developed for simulation of (166)Ho projection images and incorporated in a statistical reconstruction algorithm (SPECT-fMC). Photon scatter and attenuation for all photons sampled from the full (166)Ho energy spectrum were modeled during reconstruction by Monte Carlo simulations. The energy- and distance-dependent collimator-detector response was modeled using precalculated convolution kernels. Phantom experiments were performed to quantitatively evaluate image contrast, image noise, count errors, and activity recovery coefficients (ARCs) of SPECT-fMC in comparison with those of an energy window-based method for correction of down-scattered high-energy photons (SPECT-DSW) and a previously presented hybrid method that combines MC simulation of photopeak scatter with energy window-based estimation of down-scattered high-energy contributions (SPECT-ppMC+DSW). Additionally, the impact of SPECT-fMC on whole-body recovered activities (A(est)) and estimated radiation absorbed doses was evaluated using clinical SPECT data of six (166)Ho RE patients. RESULTS At the same noise level, SPECT-fMC images showed substantially higher contrast than SPECT-DSW and SPECT-ppMC+DSW in spheres ≥ 17 mm in diameter. The count error was reduced from 29% (SPECT-DSW) and 25% (SPECT-ppMC+DSW) to 12% (SPECT-fMC). ARCs in five spherical volumes of 1.96-106.21 ml were improved from 32%-63% (SPECT-DSW) and 50%-80% (SPECT-ppMC+DSW) to 76%-103% (SPECT-fMC). Furthermore, SPECT-fMC recovered whole-body activities were most accurate (A(est) = 1.06 × A - 5.90 MBq, R(2) = 0.97) and SPECT-fMC tumor absorbed doses were significantly higher than with SPECT-DSW (p = 0.031) and SPECT-ppMC+DSW (p = 0.031). CONCLUSIONS The quantitative accuracy of (166)Ho SPECT is improved by Monte Carlo-based modeling of the image degrading factors. Consequently, the proposed reconstruction method enables accurate estimation of the radiation absorbed dose in clinical practice.