Quantitative evaluation of amyloid positron emission tomography (PET) with standardized uptake value ratio (SUVR) plays a key role in clinical studies of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). We have proposed a PET-only (MR-free) amyloid quantification method, although some commercial software packages are required. The aim of this study was to develop an automated quantification tool for amyloid PET without using commercial software. The quantification tool was created by combining four components: (1) anatomical standardization to positive and negative templates using NEUROSTAT stereo.exe; (2) similarity calculation between standardized images and respective templates based on normalized cross-correlation (selection of the image for SUVR measurement); (3) voxel value normalization by the mean value of reference regions (making an SUVR-scaled image); and (4) SUVR calculation based on pre-defined regions of interest (ROIs). We examined 166 subjects who underwent a [11C] Pittsburgh compound-B PET scan through the Japanese Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (J-ADNI) study. SUVRs in five ROIs (frontal lobe, temporal lobe, parietal lobe, occipital lobe, and posterior cingulate cortex and precuneus) were calculated with the cerebellar cortex as the reference region. The SUVRs obtained by our tool were compared with manual step-by-step processing and the conventional PMOD-based method (PMOD Technologies, Switzerland). Compared with manual step-by-step processing, our developed automated quantification tool reduced processing time by 85%. The SUVRs obtained by the developed quantification tool were consistent with those obtained by manual processing. Compared with the conventional PMOD-based method, the developed quantification tool provided 1.5% lower SUVR values, on average. We determined that this bias is likely due to the difference in anatomical standardization methods. We developed an automated quantification tool for amyloid PET images. Using this tool, SUVR values can be quickly measured without individual MRI and without commercial software. This quantification tool may be useful for clinical studies of AD.

中文翻译：

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开发和评估淀粉样PET图像自动定量工具

具有标准化摄取值比（SUVR）的淀粉样蛋白正电子发射断层扫描（PET）的定量评估在阿尔茨海默病（AD）的临床研究中起着关键作用。尽管需要一些商业软件包，但我们已经提出了仅使用PET（无MR）的淀粉样蛋白定量方法。这项研究的目的是开发一种无需使用商业软件即可自动检测淀粉样蛋白PET的定量工具。量化工具是通过组合四个组件而创建的：（1）使用NEUROSTATstereo.exe对正和负模板进行解剖学标准化；（2）基于归一化互相关（用于SUVR测量的图像的选择）在标准化图像和各个模板之间的相似度计算；（3）通过参考区域的平均值对体素值进行归一化（制作SUVR缩放图像）；（4）基于预定义的关注区域（ROI）的SUVR计算。我们通过日本阿尔茨海默氏病神经影像学倡议（J-ADNI）研究，检查了166位接受[11C]匹兹堡化合物B-PET扫描的受试者。以小脑皮层为参考区域，计算了五个ROI（额叶，颞叶，顶叶，枕叶和后扣带皮层和前神经）的SUVR。通过我们的工具获得的SUVR与手动逐步处理和基于PMOD的常规方法（瑞士PMOD Technologies）进行了比较。与手动分步处理相比，我们开发的自动定量工具将处理时间减少了85％。通过开发的定量工具获得的SUVR与通过手动处理获得的SUVR一致。与传统的基于PMOD的方法相比，开发的定量工具平均降低了1.5％的SUVR值。我们确定这种偏见很可能是由于解剖学标准化方法的不同所致。我们开发了用于淀粉样蛋白PET图像的自动定量工具。使用此工具，无需单独的MRI和商业软件即可快速测量SUVR值。此量化工具可能对AD的临床研究有用。