Attenuation Correction: CT Topogram
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Use of the CT Scout View (Topogram) for Accurate Attenuation Correction and Quantification of Nuclear Medicine Planar Studies.
IRAS ID
236139
Contact name
Gregory James
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust
ISRCTN Number
ISRCTN00000000
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
N/A, N/A
Duration of Study in the UK
3 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
When a patient attends a nuclear medicine department for a scan, the patient is injected with a radioactive tracer which is taken up by various organs in the body, depending on what the clinician wants to study. The tracer gives off gamma radiation which is detected and imaged by a scanner called a gamma camera. Many of the gamma rays given off from the tracer are ‘stopped’ in the patient’s body before they reach the gamma camera to produce the image. This is called ‘attenuation’ and is problematic in nuclear medicine as it can lead to underestimation of the amount of uptake in the organ and give the clinician false information. It is therefore important to compensate for the gamma-rays that have been ‘stopped’ (or attenuated) in the body for accurate organ uptake measurement.
The compensation technique we use in nuclear medicine is called ‘attenuation correction’ where a CT scanner is used to get detailed images of the patient’s anatomy. Computer software can then perform the necessary corrections and produce images that represent the true uptake of tracer in the body. However, this technique is only used in 3-dimensional imaging and is yet to be widely implemented for 2-dimensional imaging due to problems with out-of-date methods and a lack of commercial solutions.
This study is researching if it is possible to use a CT scanner in a novel way to perform attenuation correction for 2-dimensional nuclear medicine imaging. If successful, we will be able to accurately quantify organ uptake of tracers using 2-dimensional nuclear medicine imaging when 3-dimensional imaging is not practical.
REC name
West Midlands - Edgbaston Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
19/WM/0175
Date of REC Opinion
12 Aug 2019
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion