Background: The limited spatial resolution in SPECT images leads to partial volume effect (PVE), degrading the subsequent dosimetric accuracy. We aim to quantitatively evaluate PVE and partial volume corrections (PVC), i.e., recovery coefficient (RC)-PVC (RC-PVC), reblurred Van-Cittert (RVC) and iterative Yang (IY), in ¹⁷⁷Lu-PSMA-617 SPECT images.

Methods: We employed a geometrical cylindrical phantom containing five spheres (diameters ranging from 20 to 40 mm) and 40 XCAT phantoms with various anatomical variations and activity distributions. SIMIND Monte Carlo code was used to generate realistic noisy projections. In the clinical study, sequential quantitative SPECT/CT imaging at 4 time-points post ¹⁷⁷Lu-PSMA-617 injections were analyzed for 10 patients. Iterative statistical reconstruction methods were used for reconstruction with attenuation, scatter and geometrical collimator detector response corrections, followed by post-filters. The RC-curves were fit based on the geometrical phantom study and applied for XCAT phantom and clinical study in RC-PVC. Matched and 0.5-2.0 voxels (2.54–10.16 mm) mismatched sphere masks were deployed in IY. The coefficient of variation (CoV) was measured on a uniform background on the geometrical phantom. RCs of spheres and mean absolute activity error (MAE) of kidneys and tumors were evaluated in simulation data, while the activity difference was evaluated in clinical data before and after PVC. 

Results: In the simulation study, the spheres experienced significant PVE, i.e., 0.26 RC and 0.70 RC for the 20 mm and 40 mm spheres, respectively. RVC and IY improved the RC of the 20 mm sphere to 0.37 and 0.75 and RC of the 40 mm sphere to 0.96 and 1.04. Mismatch in mask increased the activity error for all spheres in IY. RVC increased noise and caused Gibbs ringing artifacts. For XCAT phantoms, both RVC and IY performed comparably and were superior to RC-PVC in reducing the MAE of the kidneys. However, IY and RC-PVC outperformed RVC for tumors. The XCAT phantom study and clinical study showed a similar trend in the kidney and tumor activity differences between non-PVC and PVC. 

Conclusions: PVE greatly impacts activity quantification, especially for small objects. All PVC methods improve the quantification accuracy in ¹⁷⁷Lu-PSMA SPECT.