Impact of iterative reconstruction with resolution recovery in myocardial perfusion SPECT: phantom and clinical studies

The corrections of photon attenuation, scatter, and depth-dependent blurring improve image quality in myocardial perfusion single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) imaging; however, the combined corrections induce artifacts. Here, we present the single correction method of depth-dependent blurring and its impact for myocardial perfusion distribution in phantom and clinical studies. The phantom and clinical patient images were acquired with two conditions: circular and noncircular orbits of gamma cameras yielded constant and variable depth-dependent blurring, respectively. An iterative reconstruction with the correction method of depth-dependent was used to reconstruct the phantom and clinical patient images. We found that the single correction method improved the robustness of phantom images whether the images contained constant or variable depth-dependent blurring. The myocardial perfusion databases generated from 72 normal patients exhibited uniform perfusion distribution of whole myocardium. In summary, the single correction method of depth-dependent blurring with iterative reconstruction is helpful for myocardial perfusion SPECT.