• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.268-278
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• 2003

Purpose：The aim of this study was to evaluate the striatal binding ratio, the anterior/posterior ratio and reproducibility using a template based registration method using the standard MR template as a replacement for each patients MR image. Materials and Methods：This study analyzed the 123I IPT SPECT images of 30 patients with IPD, who were subdivided into 17 patients (56.6$\pm$10.8 yr, M/F : 8/9.) with mild IPD, and 13 patients (56.4$\pm$11.1 yr, M/F : 8/5) with severe IPD. In addition, 11 normal controls (57.8$\pm$14.4 yr, M/F : 4/7) were also analyzed. The ROIs were positioned manually in the same slice showing the highest striatal activity using the traditional manual method, whereas those were positioned automatically in a mid striatal slice of the SPECT image coregistered to the standard T1 weighted MR template. Results : The specific binding ratio (SBR) obtained using the template based registration method strongly correlated with those using the manual method in all groups : normal controls (r=0.85, P<0.001), mild IPD (r=0.84, P<0.001) and severe IPD (r=0.7, P=0.01). The SBRs obtained using both methods were significantly different among the three groups (P=0.05) and the SBRs obtained by the template based registration method were higher than those by the manual method (P=0.05) in all three groups. The APRs obtained by the template based registration correlated with those using manual method in only mild IPD (r=0.72, P=0.0). The APRs obtained by the template based registration method were significantly different from the normal controls and those with mild or severe IPD (P<0.05), whereas those obtained using the manual method were not significantly different among the three groups (P＞0.1). The reproducibility (rmsCV) of the template based registration method was 7.2% (normal controls：5.2%, mild IPD：4.2%, severe IPD：10.8%), whereas the reproducibility of the manual method was 31% (normal controls：19.7%, mild IPD：21.7%, severe IPD：46.2%). Conclusion：These results show that the use of $^{123}$ I-IPT SPECT for assessing IPD is affected by the methods used to position the striatal ROI. The template based registration method using the standard MR template can be useful in diagnosing IPD and assessing the disease severity with a high reproducibility. Therefore, the template based registration method appears to be a good replacement for the manual method.