A new axial smoothing method based on elastic mapping
- Univ. of California, Los Angeles, CA (United States)
- Chung Yuan Christian Univ., Chung-Li (China). Dept. of Electrical Engineering
New positron emission tomography (PET) scanners have higher axial and in-plane spatial resolutions but at the expense of reduced per plane sensitivity, which prevents the higher resolution from being fully realized. Normally, Gaussian-weighted interplane axial smoothing is used to reduce noise. In this study, the authors developed a new algorithm that first elastically maps adjacent planes, and then the mapped images are smoothed axially to reduce the image noise level. Compared to those obtained by the conventional axial-directional smoothing method, the images by the new method have improved signal-to-noise ratio. To quantify the signal-to-noise improvement, both simulated and real cardiac PET images were studied. Various Hanning reconstruction filters with cutoff frequency = 0.5, 0.7, 1.0x Nyquist frequency and Ramp filter were tested on simulated images. Effective in-plane resolution was measured by the effective global Gaussian resolution (EGGR) and noise reduction was evaluated by the cross-correlation coefficient. Results showed that the new method was robust to various noise levels and indicated larger noise reduction or better image feature preservation (i.e., smaller EGGR) than by the conventional method.
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE, Washington, DC (United States); National Insts. of Health, Bethesda, MD (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 458245
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-951073-; ISSN 0018-9499; TRN: 97:006828
- Journal Information:
- IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science, Vol. 43, Issue 6Pt2; Conference: IEEE nuclear science symposium and medical imaging conference, San Francisco, CA (United States), 21-28 Oct 1995; Other Information: PBD: Dec 1996
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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