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Attenuation compensation for cardiac single-photon emission computed tomographic imaging: Part 1. Impact of attenuation and methods of estimating attenuation maps

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Abstract

Attenuation is believed to be one of the major causes of false-positive cardiac single-photon emission computed tomographic (SPECT) perfusion images. This article reviews the physics of attenuation, the artifacts produced by attenuation, and the need for scatter correction in combination with attenuation correction. The review continues with a comparison of the various configurations for transmission imaging that could be used to estimate patient specific attenuation maps, and an overview of how these are being developed for use on multiheaded SPECT systems, including discussions of truncation, noise, and spatial resolution of the estimated attenuation maps. Ways of estimating patient specific attenuation maps besides transmission imaging are also discussed.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Nuclear Medicine, The University of Massachusetts Medical Center, 55 Lake Ave. North, 01655, Worcester, MA

    Michael A. King, Benjamin M. W. Tsui & Tin-Su Pan

  2. Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, N.C.

    Michael A. King, Benjamin M. W. Tsui & Tin-Su Pan

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  1. Michael A. King
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Supported in part by US Public Health grant HL50349 of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

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King, M.A., Tsui, B.M.W. & Pan, TS. Attenuation compensation for cardiac single-photon emission computed tomographic imaging: Part 1. Impact of attenuation and methods of estimating attenuation maps. J Nucl Cardiol 2, 513–524 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1016/S1071-3581(05)80044-3

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