Image improvements in positron-emission tomography due to measuring differential time-of-flight and using maximum-likelihood estimation

Conference · Sun Apr 01 04:00:00 EDT 1990 · IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers); (USA)

OSTI ID:6584222

Politte, D G ^[1]

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1. Institute for Biomedical Computing, Biomedical Computer Lab., Washington Univ., St. Louis, MO (US)

Two distinctly different methods have been used to improve images produced in positron-emission tomography. The first method is to measure the differential time of flight of the photon pairs which are detected; the second is to use an iterative algorithm which computes maximum likelihood estimates of radioactivity distributions. The authors have quantified the performance of algorithms which include neither, one or the other, or both methods of improvement by performing a repetitive simulation experiment using the Hoffman brain phantom as the underlying distribution of radioactivity. The authors' simulations show that all of the algorithms yield unbiased estimates of the desired image. The algorithm which computes maximum-likelihood estimates using time-of-flight information reconstructs images with the lowest variance. The algorithm which uses neither of these methods (filtered backprojection) reconstructs images with the highest variance.

• OSTI ID: 6584222
• Report Number(s): CONF-900143--
• Conference Information: Journal Name: IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers); (USA) Journal Volume: 37:2
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

07 ISOTOPE AND RADIATION SOURCES
550601 -- Medicine-- Unsealed Radionuclides in Diagnostics
61 RADIATION PROTECTION AND DOSIMETRY
62 RADIOLOGY AND NUCLEAR MEDICINE
655002 -- Medical Physics-- Radiation Source Calibration & Standardization
655003* -- Medical Physics-- Dosimetry
99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
990200 -- Mathematics & Computers
ALGORITHMS
BACKSCATTERING
BODY
BRAIN
CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM
COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION
COMPUTERIZED TOMOGRAPHY
DEPTH DOSE DISTRIBUTIONS
DIAGNOSTIC TECHNIQUES
DIAGNOSTIC USES
DOSIMETRY
EMISSION COMPUTED TOMOGRAPHY
IMAGE PROCESSING
ITERATIVE METHODS
MATHEMATICAL LOGIC
MAXIMUM-LIKELIHOOD FIT
MOCKUP
NERVOUS SYSTEM
NUMERICAL SOLUTION
OPTIMIZATION
ORGANS
PHANTOMS
POSITRON COMPUTED TOMOGRAPHY
PROCESSING
RADIATION DOSE DISTRIBUTIONS
RADIOACTIVITY
SCATTERING
SIMULATION
SPATIAL DOSE DISTRIBUTIONS
STRUCTURAL MODELS
TIME-OF-FLIGHT METHOD
TOMOGRAPHY
USES