Abstract
Positron emission tomography (PET) allows the quantitative in vivo measurement of the regional uptake of radioactive tracers. The low spatial resolution of PET scanners is one of the limiting factors in the absolute quantification of, for example, blood flow and metabolism in small anatomic structures like the cerebral cortex. The direct consequence of the low spatial resolution is a partial loss of the signal in structures which are smaller than twice the resolution of the tomograph (i.e., the full width at half maximum (FWHM)). As a consequence, the affected structures cover only partly the point spread function (PSF) of the scanner [9-11]. The measured PET signal in this case represents a mean activity concentration, which is lower than the real activity concentration. In clinical use, the question often arises, as to whether a decrease in the PET signal corresponds to a lower tissue accumulation or is a consequence of a partial volume effect, or a combination of both.
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Kops, E.R., Krause, B.J. (2000). Partial volume effects/corrections. In: Wieler, H.J., Coleman, R.E. (eds) PET in Clinical Oncology. Steinkopff, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-57703-1_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-57703-1_4
Publisher Name: Steinkopff, Heidelberg
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