Effective image filtration of pediatric single photon emission tomograms

Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT) in children suffers from relatively poor photon statistics due to the lower radiopharmaceutical dose when compared with adults. Consequently, the authors have made a major effort to improve the resultant tomographic images. The authors compared the effect that different measurements had on the basic reconstruction. The baseline study was a reconstruction with an internal filter appropriate to the planar image's photon density. The first enhancement was to three dimensionally filter planar images prior to reconstructing with an internal ''high resolution'' filter. The second was to apply three dimensional filter to the images which were reconstructed with an internal ''high resolution'' filter. The filtration and reconstruction were performed on both MDS-A/sup 2/, A/sup 3/ and GE Star computers. The results showed that planar images which were of poor photon flux produced much better reconstructions when pre-filtered, whereas the difference was not nearly so dramatic with high photon flux studies. Therefore, the authors recommend routine pre-reconstruction three dimensional filtering on all SPECT studies, especially those of poor photon flux. In fact in some very low photon flux 24 hour CSF, Thallium and Gallium studies, it was only possible to interpret those images when pre-filtered first.