TestDose: A SPECT image generator for clinical dosimetry studies

Patient-specific dosimetry in nuclear medicine relies on activity quantification in volumes of interest from scintigraphic imaging. Clinical dosimetry protocols have to be benchmarked against results computed from test phantoms. The design of an adequate model is a crucial step for the validation of image-based activity quantification. We propose a computing platform to automatically generate simulated SPECT images from a dynamic phantom for arbitrary scintigraphic image protocols. As regards the image generation, we first use the open-source NCAT phantom code to generate an anatomical model and 3D activity maps for different source compartments. This information is used as input for an image simulator and each source is modelled separately. Then, a compartmental model is designed, which describes interactions between different functional compartments. As a result, we can derive time-activity curves for each compartment with sampling time determined from real image acquisition protocols. Finally, to get an image at a given time after radionuclide injection, the resulting projections are aggregated by scaling the compartment contribution using the specific pharmacokinetics and corrupted by Poisson noise. Our platform consists of many software packages, either in-house developments or open-source codes. In particular, an important part of our work has been to integrate the GATE simulator in our platform, in order to generate automatically the command files needed to run a simulation. Furthermore, some developments were added in the GATE code, to optimize the generation of projections with multiple energy windows in a minimum computation time.