Standard dual-energy computed tomography (CT) uses two different X-ray energies to obtain energy-dependent tissue attenuation information to allow quantitative material decomposition. The combined use of dual-energy CT and positron emission tomography (PET) may provide a more comprehensive characterization of disease states in cancer and many other diseases. However, the integration of dual-energy CT with PET is not trivial, either requiring costly hardware upgrade or increasing radiation dose. This paper proposes a novel dual-energy CT imaging method that is enabled by the already-available PET data on PET/CT. Instead of using a second X-ray CT scan with a different energy, this method exploits time-of-flight PET image reconstruction via the maximum likelihood attenuation and activity (MLAA) algorithm to obtain a 511 keV gamma-ray attenuation image from PET emission data. The high-energy gamma-ray CT image is then combined with the low-energy X-ray CT of PET/CT to provide a pair of dual-energy CT images. A major challenge with the standard MLAA reconstruction is the high noise present in the reconstructed 511 keV attenuation map, which does not compromise the PET activity reconstruction too much but significantly affects the performance of the gamma-ray CT for material decomposition. To overcome the problem, we further propose a kernel MLAA algorithm to exploit the prior information from the available X-ray CT image. We conducted a computer simulation to test the concept and algorithm for the task of material decomposition. The simulation results indicate that this PET-enabled dual-energy CT method is promising for quantitative material decomposition. The proposed method can be readily implemented on time-of-flight PET/CT scanners to enable simultaneous PET and dual-energy CT imaging.
Combined use of PET and dual-energy CT provides complementary information for multi-parametric imaging. PETenabled dual-energy CT combines a low-energy x-ray CT image with a high-energy &γ&-ray CT (GCT) image reconstructed from time-of-flight PET emission data to enable dual-energy CT material decomposition on a PET/CT scanner. The maximumlikelihood attenuation and activity (MLAA) algorithm has been used for GCT reconstruction but suffers from noise. Kernel MLAA exploits an x-ray CT image prior through the kernel framework to guide GCT reconstruction and has demonstrated substantial improvemen…
In this study, 18F-FDG PET/CT brain scans of 50 patients with head and neck malignant lesions were employed to systematically assess the relationship between the amount of injected dose (10%, 8%, 6%, 5%, 4%, 3%, 2%, and 1% of standard dose) and the image quality through measuring standard image quality metrics (peak-signal-to-noise-ration (PSNR), structural similarity index (SSIM), root mean square error (RMSE), and standard uptake value (SUV) bias) for the whole head region as well as within the malignant lesions, considering the standard-dose PET images as reference. Furthermore, we evaluate…
Fast full-body reconstruction for a functional human RPC-PET imaging system using list-mode simulated data and its applicability to radiation oncology and radiology
The RefleXion X1 is the first biology-guided radiotherapy (BgRT) system. Its dual 90-degree PET detector collects fewer pair production events compared to a full-ring diagnostic PET system. In the proposed BgRT workflow, a short scan is acquired before treatment delivery to ensure image quality and consistency. The shorter scan time, a quarter of the simulation scan time, also leads to fewer coincidence events and hence reduced image quality. In this study, we proposed a patient-specific mean teacher UNet (MT-UNet) to enhance PET image quality and low-dose PET reconstruction on RefleXion X1. P…
Science & Technology Facilities Council, UK Research & Innovation, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory（英国科学与技术设施委员会，英国研究与创新署，鲁瑟福阿普尔顿实验室）；Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Bath（巴斯大学数学科学系）；Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB)（德国物理技术联邦研究院）；Institute of Nuclear Medicine, University College London（伦敦大学学院核医学研究所）；UCL Hawkes Institute, University College London（伦敦大学学院霍克斯研究所）；Department of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging, University Medical Center Groningen, University of Groningen（格罗宁根大学格罗宁根大学医学中心核医学与分子成像系）
Image quality of PET reconstructions is degraded by subject motion occurring during the acquisition. MR-based motion correction approaches have been studied for PET/MR scanners and have been successful at capturing regular motion patterns, when used in conjunction with surrogate signals (e.g. navigators) to detect motion. However, handling irregular respiratory motion and bulk motion remains challenging. In this work, we propose an MR-based motion correction method relying on subspace-based real-time MR imaging to estimate motion fields used to correct PET reconstructions. We take advantage of…
Weighted Directional Total Nuclear Variation for Joint Yttrium-90 PET/SPECT Reconstruction with CTAC-derived Guidance
University College London (UCL)（伦敦大学学院）；The National Physical Laboratory (NPL)（英国国家物理实验室）；Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust（牛津大学医院NHS基金会信托）；University of Oxford（牛津大学）；The Christie NHS Trust（克里斯蒂NHS信托）；Centre for Inverse Problems（逆问题中心）
For long time non-pure beta emitters are avoided from PET imaging due to extra dose and increase in background from Compton scattering. But advent of high-resolution Compton camera system opens up new domain of imaging. Various non-pure beta emitters are formed as beam irradiation byproduct in therapy which can be used in online beam range verification. In this case, the number of usable counts for imaging is generally 1-3 order lesser than normal PET scan. On the other hand, we know that in human PET scanner, 30-60\% can be tissue scattered coincidences in 3D case containing 80\% single scatt…
Complete time of flight (TOF) sinograms of state-of-the-art TOF PET scanners have a large memory footprint. Currently, they contain ~4e9 data bins which amount to ~17GB in 32bit floating point precision. Using iterative algorithms to reconstruct such enormous TOF sinograms becomes increasingly challenging due to the memory requirements and the computation time needed to evaluate the forward model for every data bin. This is especially true for more advanced optimization algorithms such as the SPDHG algorithm which allows for the use of non-smooth priors using subsets with guaranteed convergenc…
Massachusetts General Hospital（麻省总医院）；Harvard Medical School（哈佛医学院）；Zhejiang University（浙江大学）
Positron emission tomography (PET) is widely used for clinical diagnosis. As PET suffers from low resolution and high noise, numerous efforts try to incorporate anatomical priors into PET image reconstruction, especially with the development of hybrid PET/CT and PET/MRI systems. In this work, we proposed a novel 3D structural convolutional sparse coding (CSC) concept for penalized-likelihood PET image reconstruction, named 3D PET-CSC. The proposed 3D PET-CSC takes advantage of the convolutional operation and manages to incorporate anatomical priors without the need of registration or supervise…
Multi-Subject Image Synthesis as a Generative Prior for Single-Subject PET Image Reconstruction
School of Biomedical Engineering and Imaging Sciences, King’s College London（伦敦国王学院生物医学工程与影像科学学院）；Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London（伦敦国王学院精神病学、心理学与神经科学研究所）；King’s College London（伦敦国王学院）；Guy’s & St Thomas’ PET Centre（盖伊和圣托马斯PET中心）
Physics-Constrained Diffusion Reconstruction with Posterior Correction for Quantitative and Fast PET Imaging
Beijing Normal University（北京师范大学）；Beijing Friendship Hospital, Capital Medical University（首都医科大学北京友谊医院）；The First Affiliated Hospital of USTC, Division of Life Sciences and Medicine, University of Science and Technology of China（中国科学技术大学生命科学与医学部附属第一医院）；Jiangnan University（江南大学）；University of Melbourne（墨尔本大学）
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center（纪念斯隆凯特琳癌症中心）；Weill Cornell Medicine（威尔康奈尔医学院）
Positron emission tomography (PET) is a cornerstone of modern radiology. The ability to detect cancer and metastases in whole body scans fundamentally changed cancer diagnosis and treatment. One of the main bottlenecks in the clinical application is the time it takes to reconstruct the anatomical image from the deluge of data in PET imaging. State-of-the art methods based on expectation maximization can take hours for a single patient and depend on manual fine-tuning. This results not only in financial burden for hospitals but more importantly leads to less efficient patient handling, evaluati…
The foreseen CaLIPSO Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scanner is expected to yield simultaneously a fine image resolution, about 1 mm$^3$, and a high contrast. In this paper we present results of simulations for the full CaLIPSO PET scanner with a "cube" geometry. We quantify by simulations the expected image resolution and Noise Equivalent Count Rates and compare them to the performance of the most efficient clinically used PET scanner, the High-Resolution Research Tomograph by Siemens. We bring up the issues of the image reconstruction for a scanner with high spatial resolution. We also pr…
PET detectors provide the information of the position, the energy and the timing about the decay events on the LOR. Traditional PET image reconstruction has not taken the timing information into account, only used the timing information for coincidence judgments. The high timing resolution PET detectors provide very precise TOF information, then TOF image reconstruction method which utilizes the timing information of PET detectors is so crucial for the TOF PET system. We take advantage of timing information provided by a pair of TOF PET detectors, and then reconstruct the activity distribution…
The use of Time Of Flight (TOF) in Positron Emission Tomography (PET) is expected to reduce noise on images, thanks to the additional information. In clinical routine, a common reconstruction approach is the use of maximum likelihood expectation maximization (MLEM) stopped after few iterations. Empirically it was reported that, at matched number of iterations, the introduction of TOF increases noise. In this work we revise the theory describing the signal and noise convergence in MLEM, and we adapt it to describe the TOF impact on early stopped MLEM. We validated theoretical results using both…
Zhejiang University（浙江大学）；Massachusetts General Hospital（麻省总医院）；Harvard Medical School（哈佛医学院）；First Hospital of Shanxi Medical University（山西医科大学第一医院）
Patlak model is widely used in 18F-FDG dynamic positron emission tomography (PET) imaging, where the estimated parametric images reveal important biochemical and physiology information. Because of better noise modeling and more information extracted from raw sinogram, direct Patlak reconstruction gains its popularity over the indirect approach which utilizes reconstructed dynamic PET images alone. As the prerequisite of direct Patlak methods, raw data from dynamic PET are rarely stored in clinics and difficult to obtain. In addition, the direct reconstruction is time-consuming due to the bottl…
Gordon Center for Medical Imaging（戈登医学影像中心）；Massachusetts General Hospital（麻省总医院）；Harvard Medical School（哈佛医学院）；Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging（马蒂诺斯生物医学影像中心）；University of California, Davis（加州大学戴维斯分校）
Direct reconstruction methods have been developed to estimate parametric images directly from the measured PET sinograms by combining the PET imaging model and tracer kinetics in an integrated framework. Due to limited counts received, signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) and resolution of parametric images produced by direct reconstruction frameworks are still limited. Recently supervised deep learning methods have been successfully applied to medical imaging denoising/reconstruction when large number of high-quality training labels are available. For static PET imaging, high-quality training labels c…
Joint Reconstruction of Activity and Attenuation in PET by Diffusion Posterior Sampling in Wavelet Coefficient Space
LaTIM, Inserm UMR 1101, Université de Bretagne Occidentale（洛里昂医学成像与组织实验室，法国国家健康与医学研究院 UMR 1101，布列塔尼西部大学）；CentraleSupélec, IETR, CNRS UMR 6164（中央苏佩莱克高等学院，IETR，法国国家科学研究中心 UMR 6164）；Inria Monc, Université de Bordeaux, Bordeaux INP, CNRS（法国国家信息与自动化研究所蒙彼利埃中心，波尔多大学，波尔多国立理工学院，法国国家科学研究中心）；Nuclear Medicine Department, Poitiers University Hospital（核医学科，普瓦捷大学医院）
Expectation-maximization (EM) is a popular and well-established method for image reconstruction in positron emission tomography (PET) but it often suffers from slow convergence. Ordered subset EM (OSEM) is an effective reconstruction algorithm that provides significant acceleration during initial iterations, but it has been observed to enter a limit cycle. In this work, we investigate two classes of algorithms for accelerating OSEM based on variance reduction for penalised PET reconstructions. The first is a stochastic variance reduced EM algorithm, termed as SVREM, an extension of the classic…
Purpose: Explaining why 90Y TOF-PET based equivalent uniform dose (EUD) using standard FDG reconstruction parameters has been shown to predict response. Methods: The hot rods insert of a Jaszczak deluxe phantom was partially filled with a 2.65 GBq 90Y - 300ml DTPA water solution resulting in a 100 Gy mean absorbed dose in the 6 sectors. A two bed 20min/position acquisition was performed on a 550ps- and on a 320ps- TOF-PET/CT and reconstructed with standard FDG reconstruction parameters, without and with additional filtering. The whole procedure was repeated on both PET after adding a 300ml of …
J-PET Framework is an open-source software platform for data analysis, written in C++ and based on the ROOT package. It provides a common environment for implementation of reconstruction, calibration and filtering procedures, as well as for user-level analyses of Positron Emission Tomography data. The library contains a set of building blocks that can be combined by users with even little programming experience, into chains of processing tasks through a convenient, simple and well-documented API. The generic input-output interface allows processing the data from various sources: low-level data…
Accurate MR-based attenuation correction (MRAC) is essential for quantitative PET/MR imaging of the brain. In this study, we analyze the regional bias caused by MRAC based on Zero-Echo-Time MR images (ZTEAC) compared to CT-based AC (CTAC) in static and dynamic PET imaging. In addition the results are compared to the performance of the current default Atlas-based AC (AtlasAC) implemented in the GE SIGNA PET/MR. Methods: Thirty static [18F]FDG and 11 dynamic [18}F]PE2I acquisitions from a GE SIGNA PET/MR were reconstructed using ZTEAC (using a research tool, GE Healthcare), single-subject AtlasA…
Multibranch Generative Models for Multichannel Imaging with an Application to PET/CT Synergistic Reconstruction
Univ. Brest, LaTIM, INSERM, UMR 1101（布雷斯特大学、LaTIM研究所、法国国家健康与医学研究院、UMR 1101联合研究单位）；Nuclear Medicine Department, Poitiers University Hospital（普瓦捷大学医院核医学科）
The University of Tennessee（田纳西大学）；Siemens Medical Solutions Inc.（西门子医疗解决方案公司）
Direct reconstruction of positron emission tomography (PET) data using deep neural networks is a growing field of research. Initial results are promising, but often the networks are complex, memory utilization inefficient, produce relatively small 2D image slices (e.g., 128x128), and low count rate reconstructions are of varying quality. This paper proposes FastPET, a novel direct reconstruction convolutional neural network that is architecturally simple, memory space efficient, works for non-trivial 3D image volumes and is capable of processing a wide spectrum of PET data including low-dose a…
