Effects of Transmission Scan Protocol and Attenuation Correction Method on Normal Database of 2-[18F]fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose (18F-FDG) Brain Positron Emission Tomography Study

Abstract

Although post-injection transmission scan (POST-TS) after 2-[(18)F]fluoro-2-deoxy- D-glucose ((18)F-FDG) injection[A1] is useful for short examination times, the emission count of (18)F-FDG[A2] in the regional brain area was not completely subtracted with use of the POST-TS method. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of POST-TS and attenuation correction (AC) methods on the normal database (NDB). A 10 min pre-injection transmission scan (PRE-TS) was performed before (18)F-FDG[A3] was injected in eighteen normal volunteers. A 10 min POST-TS was then conducted beginning 40 min after (18)F-FDG[A4] injection, followed by a 10 min 2-dimentional emission scanning. To reconstruct each image of normal volunteers, the reconstruction was performed using the filtered back-projection (FBP) method and the ordered subsets expectation maximization (OSEM) method, with transmission-based measured attenuation correction (MAC) and the segmented attenuation correction (SAC) technique. Subtraction images of NDB with PRE-TS or POST-TS were evaluated using 3D-SSP. A phantom study was also performed in addition to a human study, and assessment was by region of interests and profile curves. NDB images with POST-TS were significantly lower in the bilateral frontal lobes and higher in the parietal lobes and occipital lobes, including the precuneus, than those with PRE-TS, regardless of the different AC and reconstruction algorithms. Therefore, we have to be careful to confirm not only emission scan methods and reconstruction algorithms, but also TS methods and AC methods in the NDB. It will be best to perform PET examinations using the same TS methods and AC methods between NDB and patients.