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Correction for Partial Volume Effect Is a Must, Not a Luxury, to Fully Exploit the Potential of Quantitative PET Imaging in Clinical Oncology

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Abstract

The partial volume effect (PVE) is considered as one of the major degrading factors impacting image quality and hampering the accuracy of quantitative PET imaging in clinical oncology. This effect is the consequence of the limited spatial resolution of whole-body PET scanners, which results in blurring of the generated images by the scanner’s response function. A number of strategies have been devised to deal with partial volume effect. However, the lack of consensus on the clinical relevance of partial volume correction and the most appropriate technique to be used in the context of clinical oncology limited their application in clinical setting. This issue is debated in this commentary.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Radiology, Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, 3400 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, USA

    Abass Alavi & Thomas J. Werner

  2. Department of Nuclear Medicine, University of Southern Denmark, DK-500, Odense, Denmark

    Poul Flemming Høilund-Carlsen & Habib Zaidi

  3. Division of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging, Geneva University Hospital, 1211, Geneva, Switzerland

    Habib Zaidi

  4. Geneva Neuroscience Centre, University of Geneva, 1205, Geneva, Switzerland

    Habib Zaidi

  5. Department of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging, University of Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands

    Habib Zaidi

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  1. Abass Alavi
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  2. Thomas J. Werner
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  3. Poul Flemming Høilund-Carlsen
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Correspondence to Abass Alavi.

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Alavi, A., Werner, T.J., Høilund-Carlsen, P.F. et al. Correction for Partial Volume Effect Is a Must, Not a Luxury, to Fully Exploit the Potential of Quantitative PET Imaging in Clinical Oncology. Mol Imaging Biol 20, 1–3 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11307-017-1146-y

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