Talk:Single-photon emission computed tomography

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Ideal sources for Wikipedia's health content are defined in the guideline Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (medicine) and are typically review articles. Here are links to possibly useful sources of information about Single-photon emission computed tomography.

PubMed provides review articles from the past five years (limit to free review articles)
The TRIP database provides clinical publications about evidence-based medicine.
Other potential sources include: Centre for Reviews and Dissemination and CDC

Question:

"SPECT Images are measured in unit called counts/sec. Can anyone help me in understanding what this unit means?" [Shanx]

Attempted Answer:

The image visible on SPECT is representative of accumulated radioactive 'tracer' chemicals in various brain regions. The "count" is how may particles of radioactive decay is seen by the scanner from that particular coordinate. The scanner will detect multiple counts per second. There is a calculation that will also turn "counts per second" into the more useful measurement "disintegrations per second". One disintegration per second is equal to one bequerel (1 Bq) of radioactivity - the current standardized units of radioactive measurement. If the specific activity (how much radioactivity is in a certain quantity of tracer) of the tracer used is known - and it will be - then you can use this information to determine exactly how much of the tracer was in the brain region of interest. The regional distribution of the tracer will then tell you something about the behaviour of relevant binding sites in the brain and their locations - which is very valuable when attempting to ascertain the function of specific systems in the brain.

Hopefully that helps somewhat, let me know if I need to readdress anything. --ARCrawford 13:36, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, this helps. Have another question on SPECT Imaging though -

Question:

"Normally SPECT Images are taken as "Multi Frame Images". What is the meaning of Multi frame images? How is it taken?"

[Shanx, 6:13pm, 04 july 2006]

Inaccurate information: For the row of "White Cell scan" under common acqusition protocols, the radionuclides listed and the respective energies, half-lives do not correspond / agree.

Introduction is a little technical

It took me (a little more knowledge than a layman; I've studied neuroscience) a relatively long time to work out that this technique requires injection of a radioligand. This sort of thing should be obvious in the introduction, but I didn't want to change it for fear of removing important information. Perhaps an expert could simplify the intro a bit and perhaps stick some of the more technical stuff in the body.163.1.143.172 (talk) 14:52, 5 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

List: Typical_SPECT_acquisition_protocols

This appears to be a bland list of protocols, and Wikipedia is not the place for lists. If not context can be provided to link this with the article text, it should be removed. --Scray (talk) 05:53, 14 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

WP is indeed the place for lists; see WP:LISTPURP. A list like this one, is called an "embedded list" (WP:EMBED). If it becomes too long and unwieldy, it can be spun off into a separate list article, see WP:LIST, and leave a summary of it behind, per WP:SS. S B H arris 10:06, 19 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

HMPAO brain 3D SPECT for neuropsychiatric diagnosis

This section makes it seem like Daniel Amen invented 3D brain SPECT, as well as lending credence to his dubious and unproven technique for neuropsychiatric diagnosis using brain SPECT.

see: http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=76 http://www.quackwatch.org/06ResearchProjects/amen.html http://holfordwatch.info/2009/05/07/jerome-burne-amen-brains/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_G._Amen#Criticism

Even if his work did turn out to be more than just a money making scam, it doesn't really have a place in this kind of informative article about SPECT. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.26.122.12 (talk) 03:39, 19 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Merge of/redirect from SPECT of brain

"Hear Ye! Here Ye! I hereby make an official merge proposal.." However that officially works, I don't know.. Anyway this one is clearly the one that should be kept (this one has a talk page, is longer and more comprehensive. SPECT of brain should probably redirect here, because some people may have heard of "SPECT" but have no idea what it stands for. (US Congress might be able to help this by passing TBI Treatment Act - but I digress severely.. But more usefully on the subject of that tangent, is there a template for OpenCongress? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jimw338 (talk • contribs) 14:04, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You are correct, but don't go far enough. Delete is needed. SPECT directs to this article anyway. Since SPECT of the brain will always be the primary role of SPECT in the immediate future, it seems unlikely that SPECT of brain will ever be a legitimate subarticle per WP:SS, so there's no reason to keep it for that reason. Meanwhile, SPECT of brain is a stub which contains nothing new, and nothing that isn't explained better HERE, under an article you get whenever you enter "SPECT". Thus, I've simply proposed on SPECT of brain that THAT stub be deleted. If I've missed something that it contains that isn't here, that bit can be added here. But that's hardly a legit "merge," since the article to be deleted is a repetetive stub. S B H arris 16:58, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]