Development of High Performance Cardiac SPECT/CT Imaging

描述(申请人提供)：目前，美国超过一半的临床核成像程序是心脏成像，几乎所有这些都是负荷/静息心肌灌注SPECT成像。除了常规的EKG门控成像方案外，许多研究人员正在探索动态和呼吸门控SPECT在评估心脏功能方面的应用。这些先进的成像技术需要比现有SPECT系统提供更高的性能。我们的研究目标是通过开发一种针对心脏成像进行优化的高性能SPECT系统来满足这一需求。多年来，我们的研究重点是开发创新的仪器，以确保在前端获取的数据的质量，然后是先进的软件处理技术，以提供高质量的断层图像。提出的新的心脏SPECT/CT混合平台的设计概念称为MACS，是从我们之前开发的脑SPECT系统演变而来的。MARCS通过高效和有效地检测所需的光子来实现高性能；这一性能将由集成和实用的传输成像方案来补充。在同一系统上顺序执行高质量发射和传输成像的能力有助于MARCS提供高效、实用和一致的高质量定量SPECT图像，以满足临床操作和诊断的准确性。既然MARCS平台的可行性已经确立，是时候开发一个原型系统了。由于这个项目的规模和复杂性巨大，我们将原型开发分为两个3年的阶段：设计阶段和工程阶段。这项申请是为设计阶段提供资金，这实际上在研究背景下更有意义，并将指导下一个工程阶段实现原型的全部潜力。我们对这些设计概念--MARCS-L系统--首次实施的初步研究非常令人鼓舞；在建造完整的实验室原型之前，有必要进行进一步的优化和实验研究。我们建议严格验证设计理念，优化MARC的设计，以实现性能的优化，并为下一阶段的原型构建制定计划。该项目将扩大心脏SPECT成像的用途，并提升其作为与x射线CT和MR1互补的临床诊断工具的地位。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Currently, more than half of all clinical nuclear imaging procedures in the U.S. are cardiac imaging, and nearly all of these are stress/rest myocardial perfusion SPECT imaging. In addition to routine EKG-gated imaging protocols, many investigators are exploring the utility of dynamic and respiration-gated SPECT to assess cardiac function. These advanced imaging techniques demand higher performance than existing SPECT systems provide. The goal of our research addresses this demand by developing a high performance SPECT system optimized for cardiac imaging. Our research emphasis over the years stresses the development of innovative instrumentation that assures the quality of data acquired at the front-end followed by advanced software processing techniques to provide high-quality tomographic images. The design concept of the proposed new cardiac SPECT/CT hybrid platform, called MarCS, is evolved from our previously developed brain SPECT system. MarCS achieves high performance through efficient and effective detection of desirable photons; this performance will be complemented by an integrated and practical transmission imaging scheme. The ability to perform high-quality emission and transmission imaging on the same system sequentially facilitates MarCS to provide high-quality quantitative SPECT images with efficiency, practicality and consistency to clinical operations, and accuracy to diagnosis. Since the feasibilities of the MarCS platform have been established, it is time to develop a prototype system. Due to the huge magnitude and complexity of this project, we divide the prototype development into two 3-year phases: a design and an engineering phase. This application is for the funding of the design phase, which is actually more significant in the context of research and which will guide the next engineering phase to realize the full potential of the prototype. Our preliminary studies for the first implementation of these design concepts - MArCS-l system - are very encouraging; further optimization and experimental investigations are necessary prior to the construction of a full-scale laboratory prototype. We propose to verify the design concepts rigorously and optimize the design of MarCS, to achieve optimized performance, and a plan for the next phase - construction of a prototype. This project will expand the utility of cardiac SPECT imaging and promote its status as a complementary clinical diagnostic tool with x-ray CT and MR1.