Open AccessRespiratory Motion Reduction in PET/CT Using Abdominal Compression for Lung Cancer Patients
Author(s) -
Tzung Chi Huang,
Yao Ching Wang,
Yu Rou Chiou,
Chia Hung Kao
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
plos one
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.99
H-Index - 332
ISSN - 1932-6203
DOI - 10.1371/journal.pone.0098033
Subject(s) - medicine , nuclear medicine , lung cancer , standardized uptake value , radiology , positron emission tomography , lung , pathology
Purpose Respiratory motion causes substantial artifacts in reconstructed PET images when using helical CT as the attenuation map in PET/CT imaging. In this study, we aimed to reduce the respiratory artifacts in PET/CT images of patients with lung tumors using an abdominal compression device. Methods Twelve patients with lung cancer located in the middle or lower lobe of the lung were recruited. The patients were injected with 370 MBq of 18 F-FDG. During PET, the patients assumed two bed positions for 1.5 min/bed. After conducting free-breathing imaging, we obtained images of the patients with abdominal compression by applying the same setup used in the free-breathing scan. The differences in the standardized uptake value (SUV) max , SUV mean , tumor volume, and the centroid of the tumors between PET and various CT schemes were measured. Results The SUV max and SUV mean derived from PET/CT imaging using an abdominal compression device increased for all the lesions, compared with those obtained using the conventional approach. The percentage increases were 18.1% ±14% and 17% ±16.8% for SUV max and SUV mean , respectively. PET/CT imaging combined with abdominal compression generally reduced the tumor mismatch between CT and the corresponding attenuation corrected PET images, with an average decrease of 1.9±1.7 mm over all the cases. Conclusions PET/CT imaging combined with abdominal compression reduces respiratory artifacts and PET/CT misregistration, and enhances quantitative SUV in tumor. Abdominal compression is easy to set up and is an effective method used in PET/CT imaging for clinical oncology, especially in the thoracic region.