Quantitative Accuracy Assessment of the NeuroEXPLORER for Diverse Imaging Applications: Moving Beyond Standard Evaluations

Quantitative molecular imaging with PET can offer insights into physiologic and pathologic processes and is widely used for studying brain disorders. The NeuroEXPLORER is a recently developed dedicated brain PET system offering high spatial resolution and high sensitivity with an extended axial length. This study evaluated the quantitative precision and accuracy of the NeuroEXPLORER with phantom and human data for a variety of imaging conditions that are relevant to dynamic neuroimaging studies. Methods: Thirty-minute scans of an image quality (IQ) phantom and a 3-dimensional Hoffman brain phantom filled with 18FFDG were performed over 13 h, covering phantom activities of 1.3–177 MBq. Furthermore, a uniform cylindric phantom filled with 558 MBq of 11C was scanned for 4 h. Quantitative accuracy was assessed using the contrast recovery coefficient (CRC), background variability, and background bias in the IQ phantom, the recovery coefficients (RCs) in the Hoffman phantom, and the bias in the uniform phantom. Results were compared at delayed time points, with different reconstruction parameters and frame lengths down to 1 s. Moreover, randomly subsampled frames of 2 imaging time points (0–2 min and 60–90 min) from a dynamic scan of a healthy volunteer with a 177-MBq injected dose of (R)-4-(3-fluoro-5-(fluoro-18F)phenyl)-1-((3-methylpyridin-4-yl)methyl)pyrrolidin-2-one (18FSynVesT-1) were used to assess quantification of brain uptake and image-derived input function extraction. Results: Negligible effects were observed on CRC and background bias with 3–177 MBq in the IQ phantom, and bias was less than 5% with 1–558 MBq in the uniform phantom. RC variations were within ±1% with 2–169 MBq in the Hoffman phantom, showcasing the system’s high spatial resolution and high sensitivity. Short-frame reconstructions of the 60- to 90-min healthy-volunteer scan showed a ±1% mean difference in quantification of brain uptake for frame lengths down to 30 s and demonstrated the feasibility of measuring image-derived input function with mean absolute differences below 10% for frame lengths down to 1 s. Conclusion: The NeuroEXPLORER, with its high detection sensitivity, maintains high precision and accuracy across a wide range of imaging conditions beyond those evaluated in standard performance tests. These results demonstrate its potential for quantitative neuroimaging applications.