QUANTITATION OF THE HUMAN BASAL GANGLIA WITH POSITRON EMISSION TOMOGRAPHY - A PHANTOM STUDY OF THE EFFECT OF CONTRAST AND AXIAL POSITIONING

The accurate measurement of the concentration of a radioisotope in small structures with PET requires a correction for quantitation loss due to the partial volume effect and the effect of scattered radiation. To evaluate errors associated with measures in the human basal ganglia (BG) we have built a unilateral model of the BG that we have inserted in a 20 cm cylinder. The recovery coefficient (RC = measured activity/true activity) for our BG phantom has been measured on a CTI tomograph (model 931-08/12) with different background concentrations (contrast) and at different axial locations in the gantry. The BG was visualized on 4 or 5 slices depending on its position in the gantry and on the contrast used. The RC was 0.75 with no background (contrast equal to 1.0). Increasing the relative radioactivity concentration in the background increased the RC from 0.75 to 2.00 when the contrast was -0.7 (BG < Background). The RC was also affected by the size and the shape of the region of interest (ROI) used (RC from 0.75 to 0.67 with ROI size from 0.12 to 1.41 cm2). These results show that accurate RC correction depends not only on the volume of the structure but also on its contrast with its surroundings as well as on the selection of the ROI. They also demonstrate that the higher the contrast the more sensitive to axial positioning PET measurements in the BG are. These data provide us with some information about the variability of PET measurements in small structure like the BG and we have proposed some strategies to improve the reproducibility.