Evaluation of the effect of reconstructed image pixel size on defect detectability in Tl-201 fan-beam SPECT by an observer performance study

The effect of reconstruction pixel size in the fan-beam filtered backprojection method in myocardial defect detection was investigated using an observer performance study and receiver operating characteristics (ROC) analysis. A mathematical phantom of the human torso was used to model the anatomy and Thallium-201 (Tl-201) uptake in humans. Half-scan fan-beam realistic projections were simulated using a low-energy high resolution (LEHR) collimator that incorporated the effects of photon attenuation, spatially varying detector response, scatter, and Poison noise. A focal length of 55 cm and a radius of rotation of 25 cm were used, which resulted to a magnification of two at the center of rotation and a maximum magnification of three in the reconstructed region of interest. By changing the reconstruction pixel size, five different projection bin width to reconstruction pixel size (PBWRPS) ratios were used which resulted to five classes of reconstructed images. Myocardial defects were simulated as Gaussian-shaped decreases in Tl-201 uptake distribution. The total projection count per 3 mm image slice was 44,000. A total of 96 reconstructed transaxial images from each one of the five classes were shown to eight observers for evaluation. The results indicate that the reconstruction pixel size has a significant effect on the quality of fan-beam SPECT images. Moreover, the study indicated that in order to ensure best image quality the PBWRPS ratio should be at least as large as the maximum possible magnification inside the reconstructed image array