Reducing CT dose in myocardial perfusion SPECT/CT

Abstract

The aim of this study was to reduce the radiation dose arising from computed tomography (CT) attenuation correction to single photon emission computed tomography myocardial perfusion imaging studies without adversely affecting its accuracy. Using the Perspex CTDI phantom with the Xi detector to measure dose, CT scans were acquired using the Siemens Symbia T over the full range of CT settings available. Using the default setting ‘AEC_mean’, the measured dose at the centre of the phantom was 1.68 mGy and the breast dose from the scout view was 0.30 mGy. The lowest dose was achieved using the dose modulation setting in which the doses were reduced to 1.21 mGy and undetectable (<0.01 mGy), respectively. To observe the effect of changing these settings, 30 patients received a stress scan with default CT settings and a rest scan utilizing single photon emission computed tomography-guided CT and the dose modulation CT settings. Results showed a mean effective dose reduction of 23.6%. The dose reduction was greatest for larger patients, with the largest dose reduction for one patient being 72%. There was no apparent difference in attenuation correction between the two sets of resultant images. These new lower-dose settings are now applied to all clinical myocardial perfusion imaging studies.