Scientific article
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English

Deep learning-based denoising of low-dose SPECT myocardial perfusion images: quantitative assessment and clinical performance

Published inEuropean journal of nuclear medicine and molecular imaging, vol. 49, no. 5, p. 1508-1522
Publication date2022
First online date2021-11-15
Abstract

Purpose: This work was set out to investigate the feasibility of dose reduction in SPECT myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI) without sacrificing diagnostic accuracy. A deep learning approach was proposed to synthesize full-dose images from the corresponding low-dose images at different dose reduction levels in the projection space.

Methods: Clinical SPECT-MPI images of 345 patients acquired on a dedicated cardiac SPECT camera in list-mode format were retrospectively employed to predict standard-dose from low-dose images at half-, quarter-, and one-eighth-dose levels. To simulate realistic low-dose projections, 50%, 25%, and 12.5% of the events were randomly selected from the list-mode data through applying binomial subsampling. A generative adversarial network was implemented to predict non-gated standard-dose SPECT images in the projection space at the different dose reduction levels. Well-established metrics, including peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), root mean square error (RMSE), and structural similarity index metrics (SSIM) in addition to Pearson correlation coefficient analysis and clinical parameters derived from Cedars-Sinai software were used to quantitatively assess the predicted standard-dose images. For clinical evaluation, the quality of the predicted standard-dose images was evaluated by a nuclear medicine specialist using a seven-point (- 3 to + 3) grading scheme.

Results: The highest PSNR (42.49 ± 2.37) and SSIM (0.99 ± 0.01) and the lowest RMSE (1.99 ± 0.63) were achieved at a half-dose level. Pearson correlation coefficients were 0.997 ± 0.001, 0.994 ± 0.003, and 0.987 ± 0.004 for the predicted standard-dose images at half-, quarter-, and one-eighth-dose levels, respectively. Using the standard-dose images as reference, the Bland-Altman plots sketched for the Cedars-Sinai selected parameters exhibited remarkably less bias and variance in the predicted standard-dose images compared with the low-dose images at all reduced dose levels. Overall, considering the clinical assessment performed by a nuclear medicine specialist, 100%, 80%, and 11% of the predicted standard-dose images were clinically acceptable at half-, quarter-, and one-eighth-dose levels, respectively.

Conclusion: The noise was effectively suppressed by the proposed network, and the predicted standard-dose images were comparable to reference standard-dose images at half- and quarter-dose levels. However, recovery of the underlying signals/information in low-dose images beyond a quarter of the standard dose would not be feasible (due to very poor signal-to-noise ratio) which will adversely affect the clinical interpretation of the resulting images.

Keywords
  • SPECT
  • Myocardial perfusion imaging
  • Denoising
  • Low-dose
  • Deep learning
Citation (ISO format)
AGHAKHAN OLIA, Narges et al. Deep learning-based denoising of low-dose SPECT myocardial perfusion images: quantitative assessment and clinical performance. In: European journal of nuclear medicine and molecular imaging, 2022, vol. 49, n° 5, p. 1508–1522. doi: 10.1007/s00259-021-05614-7
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Identifiers
Journal ISSN1619-7070
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Creation11/15/2021 8:17:00 AM
First validation11/15/2021 8:17:00 AM
Update time03/16/2023 2:39:13 AM
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