Purpose: This study aimed at developing the realistic striatal digital brain (SDB) phantom and to assess specific binding ratio (SBR) for ventricular effect in the 123I-FP-CIT SPECT imaging.
Methods: SDB phantom was constructed in to four segments (striatum, ventricle, brain parenchyma, and skull bone) using Percentile method and other image processing in the T2-weighted MR images. The reference image was converted into 128×128 matrixes to align MR images with SPECT images. The process image was reconstructed with projection data sets generated from reference images additive blurring, attenuation, scatter, and statically noise. The SDB phantom was evaluated to find the accuracy of calculated SBR and to find the effect of SBR with/without ventricular counts with the reference and process images.
Results: We developed and investigated the utility of the SDB phantom in the 123I-FP-CIT SPECT clinical study. The true value of SBR was just marched to calculate SBR from reference and process images. The SBR was underestimated 58.0% with ventricular counts in reference image, however, was underestimated 162% with ventricular counts in process images.
Conclusion: The SDB phantom provides an extremely convenient tool for discovering basic properties of 123I-FP-CIT SPECT clinical study image. It was suggested that the SBR was susceptible to ventricle.
Keywords: digital phantom; dopamine transporter imaging; magnetic resonance imaging (MRI); single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT); specific binding ratio.