Aperture size selection for improved brain tumor detection and quantification in multi-pinhole 123I-CLINDE SPECT imaging

A next-generation multi-pinhole system dedicated to brain SPECT imaging is being constructed by our research team, which we call AdaptiSPECT-C. The system prototype used herein consists of 25 square detector modules and a total of 100 apertures grouped by 4 per module. The system is specifically designed for multi-purpose brain imaging and capable of adapting in real-time each aperture size and whether it is open or shuttered closed. The use of such system would provide optimum high-performance patient-personalized imaging for a wide range of brain imaging tasks. In this work we investigated the effect of pinhole diameter variation on spherical tumor quantification for the promising brain tumor imaging agent
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I-CLINDE. To assess the quality of the images reconstructed for the different aperture sizes, we used a customized multiple-sphere tumor phantom derived from the XCAT software with a tumor size of 1 cm in diameter. Our results suggest through quantification and visual inspection that an aperture diameter in the range of 2 to 5 mm in diameter for the adaptive AdaptiSPECT-C system is likely the most suited for high performance brain tumor 123I-CLINDE imaging. In addition, our study concludes that a 4 mm pinhole diameter given its excellent spatial-resolution-to-sensitivity trade-off is promising for scout acquisition in localizing target tumor regions within the brain. We have initiated a task-based performance on the tumor detection and localization accuracy for a range of simulated tumor sizes using the channelized non-pre-whitening (CNPW) matched-filter scanning-observer.