skip to main content
OSTI.GOV title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: Compartment modeling of dynamic brain PET—The impact of scatter corrections on parameter errors

Journal Article · · Medical Physics
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1118/1.4897610· OSTI ID:22317953
; ;  [1];  [2]
  1. Department of Radiation Sciences, Umeå University, Umeå 90187 (Sweden)
  2. Department of Medical Physics, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York 10065 (United States)

Purpose: The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of scatter and its correction on kinetic parameters in dynamic brain positron emission tomography (PET) tumor imaging. The 2-tissue compartment model was used, and two different reconstruction methods and two scatter correction (SC) schemes were investigated. Methods: The GATE Monte Carlo (MC) software was used to perform 2 × 15 full PET scan simulations of a voxelized head phantom with inserted tumor regions. The two sets of kinetic parameters of all tissues were chosen to represent the 2-tissue compartment model for the tracer 3′-deoxy-3′-({sup 18}F)fluorothymidine (FLT), and were denoted FLT{sub 1} and FLT{sub 2}. PET data were reconstructed with both 3D filtered back-projection with reprojection (3DRP) and 3D ordered-subset expectation maximization (OSEM). Images including true coincidences with attenuation correction (AC) and true+scattered coincidences with AC and with and without one of two applied SC schemes were reconstructed. Kinetic parameters were estimated by weighted nonlinear least squares fitting of image derived time–activity curves. Calculated parameters were compared to the true input to the MC simulations. Results: The relative parameter biases for scatter-eliminated data were 15%, 16%, 4%, 30%, 9%, and 7% (FLT{sub 1}) and 13%, 6%, 1%, 46%, 12%, and 8% (FLT{sub 2}) for K{sub 1}, k{sub 2}, k{sub 3}, k{sub 4}, V{sub a}, and K{sub i}, respectively. As expected, SC was essential for most parameters since omitting it increased biases by 10 percentage points on average. SC was not found necessary for the estimation of K{sub i} and k{sub 3}, however. There was no significant difference in parameter biases between the two investigated SC schemes or from parameter biases from scatter-eliminated PET data. Furthermore, neither 3DRP nor OSEM yielded the smallest parameter biases consistently although there was a slight favor for 3DRP which produced less biased k{sub 3} and K{sub i} estimates while OSEM resulted in a less biased V{sub a}. The uncertainty in OSEM parameters was about 26% (FLT{sub 1}) and 12% (FLT{sub 2}) larger than for 3DRP although identical postfilters were applied. Conclusions: SC was important for good parameter estimations. Both investigated SC schemes performed equally well on average and properly corrected for the scattered radiation, without introducing further bias. Furthermore, 3DRP was slightly favorable over OSEM in terms of kinetic parameter biases and SDs.

OSTI ID:
22317953
Journal Information:
Medical Physics, Vol. 41, Issue 11; Other Information: (c) 2014 American Association of Physicists in Medicine; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0094-2405
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English