RESEARCH ARTICLE


Advantages of Hybrid SPECT/CT vs SPECT Alone



Heather A. Jacene*, 1, Sibyll Goetze1, 2, Heena Patel1, Richard L. Wahl1, Harvey A. Ziessman1
1 Division of Nuclear Medicine, The Russell H. Morgan Department of Radiology and Radiological Science, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA
2 Current Address: Department of Radiology, University of Alabama, Birmingham, AL, USA

Article Information


Identifiers and Pagination:

Year: 2008
Volume: 2
First Page: 67
Last Page: 79
Publisher Id: TOMIJ-2-67
DOI: 10.2174/1874347100802010067

Article History:

Received Date: 29/02/2008
Revision Received Date: 10/06/2008
Acceptance Date: 24/06/2008
Electronic publication date: 1/8/2008
Collection year: 2008

© 2008 Jacene et al.

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

* Address correspondence to this author at the Division of Nuclear Medicine, Russell H. Morgan Department of Radiology and Radiological Science, Johns Hopkins University, 601 N. Caroline Street, JHOC 3235, Baltimore, MD 21287, USA; Tel: 410-502-3956; Fax: 443-287-2933; E-mail: hjacene1@jhmi.edu


Abstract

We present our initial two year clinical experience with SPECT/CT, compare the interpretation to SPECT alone, provide illustrative cases, and review the published literature. Hybrid SPECT/CT has added clinical value over SPECT imaging alone primarily due to more precise anatomical lesion localization. After reading this report, the reader will appreciate the advantages of SPECT/CT imaging for clinical practice. We have reviewed SPECT/CT studies of 144 adult patients referred for various clinical indications in a busy nuclear medicine practice. The SPECT and fused SPECT/CT images were reviewed and interpreted separately to determine if addition of the fused CT images added incremental information, e.g., more definitive anatomic localization, more definitive diagnostic certainty, or changed final image interpretation compared to the SPECT images alone. Our analysis showed that SPECT/CT provided additional information for image interpretation in 54% (78/144) of cases. In most of these (68/78), the CT data improved localization of abnormal and physiologic findings. Diagnostic certainty was improved in 34/144 cases (24%) and image interpretation was beneficially altered in 18/144 cases (13%). The fusion of anatomical and functional information by hybrid SPECT/CT positively impacts image interpretation and adds diagnostic value over SPECT alone.