A one-shot whole-body bone SPECT may be recorded in less than 20 minutes with the high-sensitivity Veriton® CZT-camera

1288 Introduction: The “Veriton” whole-body CZT-camera (Spectrum Dynamics Medical®) is equipped with 12 swivelling high-resolution detectors covering an axial field-of view of 32 cm and assembled with a helicoidal CT in a hybrid system. The detectors may be placed close to any part of the body and the overall detection system provides a much higher count sensitivity than current Anger-SPECT cameras. This study was aimed to determine whether whole-body bone SPECT/CT acquisitions could be recorded with the Veriton camera: 1) with a comparable total recording-time than that of current whole-body bone planar scintigraphy (≤ 20 min, for a scan speed set at 15 cm/min) and 2) with a high enough image quality as compared with the bone SPECT currently obtained with much longer recording times on Anger cameras. Additional Veriton SPECT recordings of only 3-min per bed position were scheduled in 9 patients, who were initially referred to a conventional whole-body planar scintigraphy on an Anger camera equipped with parallel-hole collimators (Symbia, Siemens Medical Healthineers®) and among whom, 6 had additionally undergone an 10-min Anger-SPECT recording centered on the pelvis. SPECT images were reconstructed with dedicated iterative algorithms, corrections for diffusion and for attenuation with the CT map, and the recommended voxel sizes were 2.46 mm for the Veriton and 4.80 mm for the Anger camera. Comparatively to planar whole-body scintigraphy, the whole-body SPECT images from the Veriton, which are displayed through maximum intensity projections and through a summed coronal slice in Figure 1, gave evidence of a higher contrast of bone structures and especially for the smallest ones (see hands, feet, ribs ⋯). Image quality, provided by the 3-min CZT-SPECT recordings centered on the pelvis, was comparable to that provided by the 10-min Anger-SPECT recordings (see Figure 2) with especially, equivalent image contrast for axial deep-seated short bones piling (lumbar vertebrae: 1.79±0.12 vs. 1.80±0.07), as well as for more superficial axial flat bones (iliac crests: 1.83±0.20 vs. 1.76±0.11), and with equivalent spatial resolution assessed through a sharpness index (maximal uptake variation between contiguous voxels expressed in % of maximal uptake value) for lumbar vertebrae: 6.1±0.6% vs. 6.0±1.5% and iliac crests: 9.9±2.3% vs. 9.1±1.0%. An even higher image quality could be achieved for the Veriton SPECT images reconstructed with the Iterative Reconstruction with Resolution Recovery and Partial Volume Correction (IR-RRPVC) (Figure 2). These preliminary results suggest that a one-shot whole-body SPECT recording of no more than 20 min with the high-sensitivity Veriton CZT-camera could advantageously replace current bone scanning protocols involving whole-body planar recording associated or not with additional SPECT acquisitions.