ROC EVALUATION OF SPECT MYOCARDIAL LESION DETECTABILITY WITH AND WITHOUT SINGLE ITERATION NONUNIFORM CHANG ATTENUATION COMPENSATION USING AN ANTHROPOMORPHIC FEMALE PHANTOM

The purpose of this work was to evaluate lesion detectability with and without nonuniform attenuation compensation (AC) in myocardial perfus ion SPECT imaging in women using an anthropomorphic phantom and receiv er operating characteristics (ROC) methodology. Breast attenuation cau ses artifacts in reconstructed images and may increase the difficulty of diagnosis of myocardial perfusion imaging in women. The null hypoth esis tested using the ROC study was that nonuniform AC does not change the lesion detectability in myocardial perfusion SPECT imaging in wom en. We used a filtered backprojection (FBP) reconstruction algorithm a nd Chang's single iteration method for AC. In conclusion, with out pro posed myocardial defect model nuclear medicine physicians demonstrated no significant difference for the detection of the anterior wall defe ct; however, a greater accuracy for the detection of the inferior wall defect was observed without nonuniform AC that with it (P- value = 0. 0034). Medical physicists did not demonstrate any statistically signif icant difference in defect detection accuracy with or without nonunifo rm AC in the female phantom.