Evaluation of nuclear medicine planar images based on partial volume effects and recovery coefficients at different activity levels of radionuclides and matrix sizes

Abstract

Abstract The partial volume effect evaluations had been effectively used as method for the evaluation of SPECT images in nuclear medicine. The study focused on the use of partial volume effect method and the evaluation of recovery coefficient in the 2D planar images in nuclear medicine. The planar images were obtained by using a modified Jaszczak phantom that contains radionuclide volume of differents diameter sizes and three activity levels. The planar images were also taken at three different matrix sizes of gamma camera set up at 128 x 128, 256 x 256 and 512 x 512. The results showed that the contrast values increased exponentially at larger diameter sizes of radionuclide. The contrast also significantly increased when higher matrix sizes were used. The recovery coefficient evaluation of the planar images were singnificantly decreased when larger matrix sizes were used. There were no significant differences between the recovery coefficients between planar images obtained with and without background counts. The overall results indicated the suitability of using the partical volume efffect method to evaluate the planar images of nuclear medicine.