Analytic time-of-flight positron emission tomography reconstruction: three-dimensional case

• Main Authors: Gengsheng L. Zeng, Ya Li, Qiu Huang
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: SpringerOpen 2020-02-01
• Series: Visual Computing for Industry, Biomedicine, and Art
• Subjects: Positron emission tomography; Time-of-flight; Analytic reconstruction
• Online Access: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s42492-020-0042-5

Abstract In a positron emission tomography (PET) scanner, the time-of-flight (TOF) information gives us rough event position along the line-of-response (LOR). Using the TOF information for PET image reconstruction is able to reduce image noise. The state-of-the-art TOF PET image reconstruction uses iterative algorithms. This study introduces an analytic TOF PET algorithm that focuses on three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction. The proposed algorithm is in the form of backprojection filtering, in which the backprojection is performed first by using a time-resolution profile function, and then a 3D filter is applied to the backprojected image. For the list-mode data, the backprojection is carried out in the event-by-event fashion, and the timing resolution determined weighting function is used along the projection LOR. Computer simulations are carried out to verify the feasibility of the proposed algorithm.