Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Verification of image quality and quantification in whole-body positron emission tomography with continuous bed motion

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Annals of Nuclear Medicine Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Objective

Whole-body dynamic imaging using positron emission tomography (PET) facilitates the quantification of tracer kinetics. It is potentially valuable for the differential diagnosis of tumors and for the evaluation of therapeutic efficacy. In whole-body dynamic PET with continuous bed motion (CBM) (WBDCBM-PET), the pass number and bed velocity are key considerations. In the present study, we aimed to investigate the effect of a combination of pass number and bed velocity on the quantitative accuracy and quality of WBDCBM-PET images.

Methods

In this study, WBDCBM-PET imaging was performed at a body phantom using seven bed velocity settings in combination with pass numbers. The resulting image quality was evaluated. For comparing different acquisition settings, the dynamic index (DI) was obtained using the following formula: [P/S], where P represents the pass number, and S represents the bed velocity (mm/s). The following physical parameters were evaluated: noise equivalent count at phantom (NECphantom), percent background variability (N10 mm), percent contrast of the 10 mm hot sphere (QH, 10 mm), the QH, 10 mm/N10 mm ratio, and the maximum standardized uptake value (SUVmax). Furthermore, visual evaluation was performed.

Results

The NECphantom was equivalent for the same DI settings regardless of the bed velocity. The N10 mm exhibited an inverse correlation (r < − 0.89) with the DI. QH,10 mm was not affected by DI, and a correlation between QH,10 mm/N10 mm ratio and DI was found at all the velocities (r > 0.93). The SUVmax of the spheres was not influenced by the DI. The coefficient of variations caused by bed velocity decreased in larger spheres. There was no significant difference between the bed velocities on visual evaluation.

Conclusion

The quantitative accuracy and image quality achieved with WBDCBM-PET was comparable to that achieved with non-dynamic CBM, regardless of the pass number and bed velocity used during imaging for a given acquisition time.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Cutler PD, Xu M. Strategies to improve 3D whole-body PET image reconstruction. Phys Med Biol. 1996;41:1453–67.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  2. Boellaard R, Oyen WJ, Hoekstra CJ, Hoekstra OS, Visser EP, Willemsen AT, et al. The Netherlands protocol for standardisation and quantification of FDG whole body PET studies in multi-centre trials. Eur J Nucl Med Mol Imaging. 2008;35:2320–33.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Daisaki H, Shinohara H, Terauchi T, Murano T, Shimada N, Moriyama N, et al. Multi-bed-position acquisition technique for deep inspiration breath-hold PET/CT: a preliminary result for pulmonary lesions. Ann Nucl Med. 2010;24:179–88.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  4. McKeown C, Gillen G, Dempsey MF, Findlay C. Influence of slice overlap on positron emission tomography image quality. Phys Med Biol. 2016;61:1259–77.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  5. Panin VY, Smith AM, Hu J, Kehren F, Casey ME. Continuous bed motion on clinical scanner: design, data correction, and reconstruction. Phys Med Biol. 2014;59:6153–74.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  6. Acuff SN, Osborne D. Clinical workflow considerations for implementation of continuous-bed-motion PET/CT. J Nucl Med Technol. 2016;44:55–8.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  7. Osborne DR, Acuff S, Cruise S, Syed M, Neveu M, Stuckey A, et al. Quantitative and qualitative comparison of continuous bed motion and traditional step and shoot PET/CT. Am J Nucl Med Mol Imaging. 2015;5:56–64.

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  8. Owaki Y, Nakahara T, Shimizu T, Smith AM, Luk WK, Inoue K, et al. Effects of breathing motion on PET acquisitions: step and shoot versus continuous bed motion. Nucl Med Commun. 2018;39:665–71.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  9. Schatka I, Weiberg D, Reichelt S, Owsianski-Hille N, Derlin T, Berding G, et al. A randomized, double-blind, crossover comparison of novel continuous bed motion versus traditional bed position whole-body PET/CT imaging. Eur J Nucl Med Mol Imaging. 2016;43:711–7.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  10. Rausch I, Cal-Gonzalez J, Dapra D, Gallowitsch HJ, Lind P, Beyer T, et al. Performance evaluation of the Biograph mCT Flow PET/CT system according to the NEMA NU2-2012 standard. EJNMMI Phys. 2015;2:26.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  11. Yamashita S, Yamamoto H, Nakaichi T, Yoneyama T, Yokoyama K. Comparison of image quality between step-and-shoot and continuous bed motion techniques in whole-body (18)F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography with the same acquisition duration. Ann Nucl Med. 2017;31:686–95.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  12. Karakatsanis NA, Lodge MA, Tahari AK, Zhou Y, Wahl RL, Rahmim A. Dynamic whole-body PET parametric imaging: I. Concept, acquisition protocol optimization and clinical application. Phys Med Biol. 2013;58:7391–418.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  13. Karakatsanis NA, Lodge MA, Zhou Y, Wahl RL, Rahmim A. Dynamic whole-body PET parametric imaging: II. Task-oriented statistical estimation. Phys Med Biol. 2013;58:7419–45.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  14. Zhu W, Li Q, Bai B, Conti PS, Leahy RM. Patlak image estimation from dual time-point list-mode PET data. IEEE Trans Med Imaging. 2014;33:913–24.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  15. Houshmand S, Salavati A, Hess S, Werner TJ, Alavi A, Zaidi H. An update on novel quantitative techniques in the context of evolving whole-body PET imaging. PET Clin. 2015;10:45–58.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  16. Karakatsanis NA, Casey ME, Lodge MA, Rahmim A, Zaidi H. Whole-body direct 4D parametric PET imaging employing nested generalized Patlak expectation-maximization reconstruction. Phys Med Biol. 2016;61:5456–85.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  17. Palard-Novello X, Blin AL, Bourhis D, Garin E, Salaun PY, Devillers A, et al. Comparison of choline influx from dynamic (18)F-Choline PET/CT and clinicopathological parameters in prostate cancer initial assessment. Ann Nucl Med. 2018;32:281–7.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  18. Taddio MF, Mu L, Keller C, Schibli R, Kramer SD. Physiologically based pharmacokinetic modelling with dynamic PET data to study the in vivo effects of transporter inhibition on hepatobiliary clearance in mice. Contrast Media Mol Imaging. 2018;2018:5849047.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  19. Osborne DR, Acuff S. Whole-body dynamic imaging with continuous bed motion PET/CT. Nucl Med Commun. 2016;37:428–31.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  20. Burger IA, Vargas HA, Apte A, Beattie BJ, Humm JL, Gonen M, et al. PET quantification with a histogram derived total activity metric: superior quantitative consistency compared to total lesion glycolysis with absolute or relative SUV thresholds in phantoms and lung cancer patients. Nucl Med Biol. 2014;41:410–8.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  21. Boellaard R, Delgado-Bolton R, Oyen WJ, Giammarile F, Tatsch K, Eschner W, et al. FDG PET/CT: EANM procedure guidelines for tumour imaging: version 2.0. Eur J Nucl Med Mol Imaging. 2015;42:328–54. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00259-014-2961-x.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  22. Maus J, Hofheinz F, Schramm G, Oehme L, Beuthien-Baumann B, Lukas M, et al. Evaluation of PET quantification accuracy in vivo. Comparison of measured FDG concentration in the bladder with urine samples. Nuklearmedizin. 2014;53:67–77.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  23. Fukukita H, Suzuki K, Matsumoto K, Terauchi T, Daisaki H, Ikari Y, et al. Japanese guideline for the oncology FDG-PET/CT data acquisition protocol: synopsis of Version 2.0. Ann Nucl Med. 2014;28:693–705.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  24. Strother SC, Casey ME, Hoffman EJ. Measuring PET scanner sensitivity: relating countrates to image signal-to-noise ratios using noise equivalents counts. IEEE Trans Nucl Sci. 1990;37(2):783–788.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Akamatsu G, Ishikawa K, Mitsumoto K, Taniguchi T, Ohya N, Baba S, et al. Improvement in PET/CT image quality with a combination of point-spread function and time-of-flight in relation to reconstruction parameters. J Nucl Med. 2012;53:1716–22.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  26. Vandenberghe S, Mikhaylova E, D’Hoe E, Mollet P, Karp JS. Recent developments in time-of-flight PET. EJNMMI Phys. 2016;3:3.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  27. Hashimoto N, Morita K, Tsutsui Y, Himuro K, Baba S, Sasaki M. Time-of-flight information improved the detectability of sub-centimeter sphere using clinical positron emission tomography/computed tomography scanner. J Nucl Med Technol. 2018;46:268–73.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  28. Lee YS, Kim JS, Kim KM, Kang JH, Lim SM, Kim HJ. Performance measurement of PSF modeling reconstruction (True X) on Siemens Biograph TruePoint TrueV PET/CT. Ann Nucl Med. 2014;28:340–8.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  29. Ashrafinia S, Mohy-Ud-Din H, Karakatsanis NA, Jha AK, Casey ME, Kadrmas DJ, et al. Generalized PSF modeling for optimized quantitation in PET imaging. Phys Med Biol. 2017;62:5149–79.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  30. Rahmim A, Qi J, Sossi V. Resolution modeling in PET imaging: theory, practice, benefits, and pitfalls. Med Phys. 2013;40:064301.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  31. Kidera D, Kihara K, Akamatsu G, Mikasa S, Taniguchi T, Tsutsui Y, et al. The edge artifact in the point-spread function-based PET reconstruction at different sphere-to-background ratios of radioactivity. Ann Nucl Med. 2016;30:97–103.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

A part of this study was presented at the Annual Meeting of SNMMI in Philadelphia, USA, Jun 23, 2018. The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. This study received no funding.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Radiology, Juntendo University School of Medicine, 3-1-3, Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-8421, Japan

    Hideo Yamamoto, Shota Takemoto, Akira Maebatake, Shuhei Karube, Yuki Yamashiro, Atsushi Nakanishi & Koji Murakami

Authors
  1. Hideo Yamamoto
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Shota Takemoto
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Akira Maebatake
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Shuhei Karube
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Yuki Yamashiro
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Atsushi Nakanishi
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  7. Koji Murakami
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hideo Yamamoto.

Ethics declarations

Ethical approval

This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

Additional information

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Yamamoto, H., Takemoto, S., Maebatake, A. et al. Verification of image quality and quantification in whole-body positron emission tomography with continuous bed motion. Ann Nucl Med 33, 288–294 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12149-019-01334-z

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12149-019-01334-z

Keywords

Search

Navigation