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An iterative reconstruction using median root prior and anatomical prior from the segmented μ-map for count-limited transmission data in PET imaging

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Abstract

Objective

Recently, whole-body positron emission tomography (PET) examination has greatly developed. To reduce the overall examination time, the transmission scan has been increasingly shortened. Many noise-reduction processes have been developed for count-limited transmission data. Segmented attenuation correction (SAC) is one method by which the pixel values of transmission image are transformed into several groups. The median root prior-ordered subset convex (MRP-OSC) algorithm is another method that is applicable to control the noise level on the basis that the change of the pixel value is locally monotonous. This article presents an alternative approach on the basis of the Bayesian iterative reconstruction technique incorporating a median prior and an anatomical prior from the segmented μ-map for count-limited transmission data.

Methods

The proposed method is based on the Bayesian iterative reconstruction technique. The median prior and the anatomical prior are represented as two Gibbs distributions. The product of these distributions was used as a penalty function.

Results

In the thorax simulation study, the mean square error from the true transmission image of the presented method (5.74 × 10−5) was lower than MRP-OSC (6.72 × 10−5) and SAC (7.08 × 10−5). The results indicate that the noise of the image reconstructed from the proposed technique was decreased more than that of MRP-OSC without segmentation error such as that of an SAC image. In the thorax phantom study, the emission image that was corrected using the proposed technique displayed little noise and bias (27.42 ± 0.96 kBq/ml, calculated from a region of interest drawn on the liver of the phantom); it was very similar to the true value (28.0 kBq/ml).

Conclusions

The proposed method is effective for reducing propagation of noise from transmission data to emission data without loss of the quantitative accuracy of the PET image.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Radiological Science, Tokyo Metropolitan University of Health Sciences, 7-2-10 Higashi-ogu, Arakawa-ku, Tokyo, 116-8511, Japan

    Kazuya Sakaguchi & Hiroyuki Shinohara

  2. Nishidai Clinic, Tokyo, Japan

    Kazuya Sakaguchi & Kimiichi Uno

  3. Department of Information Processing, Yokohama Soei College, Yokohama, Japan

    Takeyuki Hashimoto

  4. Image Processing Division, Bioimaging Laboratory, Inc., Kyoto, Japan

    Takashi Yokoi

Authors
  1. Kazuya Sakaguchi
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  2. Hiroyuki Shinohara
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  3. Takeyuki Hashimoto
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  4. Takashi Yokoi
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  5. Kimiichi Uno
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hiroyuki Shinohara.

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Sakaguchi, K., Shinohara, H., Hashimoto, T. et al. An iterative reconstruction using median root prior and anatomical prior from the segmented μ-map for count-limited transmission data in PET imaging. Ann Nucl Med 22, 269–279 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12149-007-0098-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12149-007-0098-8

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