99mTc/123I Dual-Radionuclide Correction for Self-Scatter, Down-Scatter, and Tailing Effect for a CZT SPECT With Varying Tracer Distributions

Single-photon emission computed tomography systems distinguish radionuclides by using multiple energy windows. For cadmium zinc telluride (CZT) detectors, the energy spectrum has a low-energy tail leading to additional crosstalk between the radionuclides. Previous work developed models to correct the scatter and crosstalk for CZT-based dedicated cardiac systems with similar 99mTc/123I tracer distributions. These models estimate the primary and scatter components by solving a set of equations employing the maximum-likelihood expectation–maximization approach. A penalty term is applied to ensure convergence. The present work estimates the penalty term for any 99mTc/123I activity level. An iterative approach incorporating Monte Carlo into the iterative image reconstruction loops was developed to estimate the penalty terms. We used SIMIND and extended cardiac-torso phantoms in this study. Distribution of tracers in the myocardial tissue and blood pool was varied to simulate a dynamic acquisition. Evaluations of the estimated and the real penalty terms were performed using simulations and large animal data. The myocardium to blood pool ratio was calculated using regions of interests in the myocardial tissue and the blood pool for quantitative analysis. All corrected images yielded a good agreement with the gold standard images. In conclusion, we developed a CZT crosstalk correction method for quantitative imaging of 99mTc/123I activity levels by dynamically estimating the penalty terms.