Aim: The purpose of this project was to evaluate whether TeraRecon’s Aquarius 3D reconstruction software is of added value in diagnosing bone pathologies compared with Philips’ in-house Syntegra viewing software with respect to SPECT/CT bone scans.

Method: Three physicians and two nuclear medicine technologists were required to select any 5 SPECT/CT bone scans with various pathologies and fill out a questionnaire, stating whether Aquarius improves their confidence in making a diagnosis. They were also required to rate on a scorecard certain aspects of the two software packages, such as speed, ease of use and other technical aspects, as well as stating which software package they preferred using for evaluating the bone scans and why. A total of 25 different bone SPECT/CT scans were viewed by 5 professional observers. Bone scintigraphy (including planar and SPECT) and CT imaging were performed on a Philips Precedence SPECT/CT system.

Results: Aquarius increased the observers’ confidence in making a diagnosis in 60% (15/25) of SPECT/CT bone scans. Aquarius scored a total of 124 points (51%) and Syntegra scored 118 points (49%) for technical aspect ratings and software usability. For evaluating the bone scans, one observer preferred using Aquarius, one preferred using Syntegra, one was uncommitted and two stated that they did not prefer either of them.

Conclusion: Aquarius slightly improves the confidence level over Syntegra in making a diagnosis, however, it’s technical aspects were generally not superior and it was not the preferred software package for evaluating bone anomalies on SPECT/CT scans.