Experimental evaluation for joint estimation approach

Single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) provides a potential to perform in vivo quantification of the radioactivity and dose distributions in the process of evaluating radiopharmaceuticals. The inherent modest resolution in SPECT impedes the potential of accurate quantification. Previously, the authors investigated a joint estimation approach for combining SPECT functional information with high resolution, structurally correlated MRI anatomical information to improve the accuracy of SPECT quantification, and the computer simulation results showed that this approach can exploit MRI region information that matches the SPECT functional information and to reduce artifacts caused by mismatched MRI anatomical information. Here, the authors further describe the experimental evaluation of the joint estimation approach using actual SPECT and MRI imaging with an animal-sized phantom. They describe practical details in applying the joint estimation approach and present the experimental evaluation results of quantitative analysis.