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Eur J Nucl Med Mol Imaging (2014) 41 (Suppl 1):S3S16 DOI 10.1007/s00259-013-2606-5
REVIEW ARTICLE
The origins of SPECT and SPECT/CT
Brian F. Hutton
Received: 1 October 2013 /Accepted: 2 October 2013 /Published online: 12 November 2013 # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013
Abstract Single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) has a long history of development since its initial demonstration by Kuhl and Edwards in 1963. Although clinical utility has been dominated by the rotating gamma camera, there have been many technological innovations with the recent popularity of organ-specific dedicated SPECT systems. The combination of SPECT and CT evolved from early transmission techniques used for attenuation correction with the initial commercial systems predating the release of PET/CT. The development and acceptance of SPECT/CT has been relatively slow with continuing debate as to what cost/performance ratio is justified. Increasingly, fully diagnostic CT is combined with SPECT so as to facilitate optimal clinical utility.
Keywords Single photon emission tomography . SPECT .
SPECT/CT
Introduction
Since the early introduction of radioactive tracers for use in medicine, there has been the desire to visualize the true distribution of the tracer and to quantify 3-D uptake in the body. It is therefore not surprising that emission tomography was explored at an early stage of nuclear medicines development and continues to be one of the primary challenges in technological development. There is evidence of early research on transverse axial X-ray tomography in the 1940s and 1950s following on from even earlier work on focal plane X-ray tomography. It was, however, in the 1960s and
1970s that single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) developed to the stage of being clinically applicable and more widely available as a commercial product, along with both X-ray computed tomography (CT) and positron emission tomography (PET) (and magnetic resonance imaging, MRI) (Table 1). It is of course a misnomer to include computed at a time that predates the use of computers for reconstruction; early reconstruction was achieved using optical methods. The term SPECT was introduced at a later date, and in some cases the method was referred to as single photon emission tomography (SPET).
The development of clinical SPECT has involved much innovation, but in practice the emphasis has largely been on designing a flexible instrument with broad clinical...