SU‐D‐201‐05: Phantom Study to Determine Optimal PET Reconstruction Parameters for PET/MR Imaging of Y‐90 Microspheres Following Radioembolization

Purpose:Imaging Y‐90 microspheres with PET/MRI following hepatic radioembolization has the potential for predicting treatment outcome and, in turn, improving patient care. The positron decay branching ratio, however, is very small (32 ppm), yielding images with poor statistics even when therapy doses are used. Our purpose is to find PET reconstruction parameters that maximize the PET recovery coefficients and minimize noise.Methods:An initial 7.5 GBq of Y‐90 chloride solution was used to fill an ACR phantom for measurements with a PET/MRI scanner (Siemens Biograph mMR). Four hot cylinders and a warm background activity volume of the phantom were filled with a 10:1 ratio. Phantom attenuation maps were derived from scaled CT images of the phantom and included the MR phased array coil. The phantom was imaged at six time points between 7.5–1.0 GBq total activity over a period of eight days. PET images were reconstructed via OP‐OSEM with 21 subsets and varying iteration number (1–5), post‐reconstruction filter size (5–10 mm), and either absolute or relative scatter correction. Recovery coefficients, SNR, and noise were measured as well as total activity in the phantom.Results:For the 120 different reconstructions, recovery coefficients ranged from 0.1–0.6 and improved with increasing iteration number and reduced post‐reconstruction filter size. SNR, however, improved substantially with lower iteration numbers and larger post‐reconstruction filters. From the phantom data, we found that performing 2 iterations, 21 subsets, and applying a 5 mm Gaussian post‐reconstruction filter provided optimal recovery coefficients at a moderate noise level for a wide range of activity levels.Conclusion:The choice of reconstruction parameters for Y‐90 PET images greatly influences both the accuracy of measurements and image quality. We have found reconstruction parameters that provide optimal recovery coefficients with minimized noise. Future work will include the effects of the body matrix coil and off‐center measurements.