Abstract
In May 2018 the new Biograph Vision PET/CT (Siemens Healthineers, Knoxville, USA) was introduced at the University Medical Center Groningen. This study evaluated the initial experiences with this new PET/CT system in terms of perceived image quality and semi-quantitative analysis in comparison to the Biograph mCT (Siemens Healthineers, Knoxville, USA) as a reference. Methods: A total of 20 oncological patients were enrolled and received a single 18F-FDG injected dose of 3 MBq/kg followed by a dual-imaging PET protocol. Ten patients were scanned on the Biograph mCT first, while the other ten patients were scanned on the Biograph Vision first. The locally preferred clinical reconstructions were blindly reviewed by three nuclear medicine physicians and scored 1-5 on tumor lesion delineation, overall image quality, and image noise. In addition, these clinical reconstructions were used for semi-quantitative analysis; measurement of standardized uptake values (SUVs) in tumor lesions. Reconstructions conform the European Association of Nuclear Medicine Research Ltd (EARL) specifications were also used for measurements of SUVs in tumor lesions and healthy tissues for comparison between systems. Results: 20 oncological patients (14 men, 6 women; age 36-84, mean ± SD 61 ± 16 years) received a single 18F-FDG injected dose (range 145-405 MBq, mean ± SD 268 ± 59.3). Images acquired on the Biograph Vision were scored significantly higher on tumor lesion delineation, overall image quality, and image noise in comparison to images acquired on the Biograph mCT (P < 0.001). The overall inter-reader agreement showed a Fleiss kappa of 0.61 (95% CI 0.53 – 0.70). Furthermore, the measured SUVs in tumor lesions and healthy tissues showed a good agreement (within 95%) between PET/CT systems, in particular when using EARL compliant reconstructions on both systems. Conclusion: In this initial study it was found that the Biograph Vision PET/CT showed improved image quality compared with the Biograph mCT in terms of lesion demarcation, overall image quality, and visually assessed signal-to-noise ratio. The two systems are comparable in semi-quantitatively assessed image biomarkers in both healthy tissues and tumor lesions. Improved quantitative performance may, however, be feasible using the clinically optimized reconstruction settings.
- Instrumentation
- Oncology: General
- PET/CT
- PET/CT
- digital detectors
- image quality
- silicon photomultipliers
- standardized uptake value
- Copyright © 2019 by the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging, Inc.