Accuracy and precision of compartmental model parameters obtained from directly estimated dynamic SPECT time-activity curves

Quantitative kinetic analysis of dynamic cardiac single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) data has the potential to provide better contrast between healthy and diseased tissue, compared to static images. However, imaging a rapidly changing radiopharmaceutical distribution with the use of a moving gantry yields inconsistent projection data that can generate artifacts in a time sequence of conventional image reconstructions. The artifacts can lead to biases in kinetic parameters estimated from the image sequence. This source of bias can be eliminated by estimating B-spline models for time-activity curves directly from the projections. In this study, we perform Monte Carlo simulations to determine how the polynomial order and initial time sampling of the splines affect the accuracy and precision of compartmental model parameters obtained from directly estimated time-activity curves.