Object-specific attenuation correction of SPECT with correlated dual-energy X-ray CT

We have developed a prototype emission-transmission computed tomographic (ETCT) system, which can acquire both radionuclide-emission and dual-energy X-ray transmission data. The dual-energy X-ray data are used to synthesize an object- and energy-specific attenuation map which is incorporated into an ML-EM algorithm to reconstruct an attenuation-corrected SPECT image. The technique was applied to a thorax-like phantom with regions simulating lung, background and cardiac regions, and bone. SPECT images reconstructed with no attenuation correction, or with a uniform water-equivalent map, contained increased count levels in the lung region and reduced count levels in the cardiac region as compared with the radioactivity concentrations contained in the phantom. Use of an object-specific attenuation map improved the accuracy of the reconstruction, but overestimated the activity in the cardiac chamber by about 10%. This error was reduced to about 5% when the attenuation coefficients were modified to include the effects of scattered radiation.