Evaluation of motion-correction methods for dual-gated cardiac positron emission tomography/computed tomography imaging

Riku Klén, Tommi Noponen, Juha Koikkalainen, Jyrki Lötjönen, Kris Thielemans, Erika Hoppela, Hannu Sipilä, Mika Teräs, Juhani Knuuti
2016 Nuclear medicine communications  
and keywords Abstract Dual gating is a method of dividing the data of a cardiac PET scan into smaller bins according to the respiratory motion and the ECG of the patient. It reduces the undesirable motion artefacts in images but produces several images for interpretation and decreases the quality of single images. By using motion correction techniques, the motion artefacts in the dual gated images can be corrected and the images can be combined into a single motion-free image with good
more » ... s. The aim of the present study is to develop and evaluate motion correction methods for cardiac PET studies. We have developed and compared two different methods: CT-PET-based and CTonly methods. The methods were implemented and tested with a cardiac phantom and three patient datasets. In both methods, anatomical information of CT images is used to create models for the cardiac motion. In the patient study the CT-only-method reduced motion (measured as the centre of mass of the myocardium) on average 43%, increased contrast-to-noise ratio on average 6.0% and reduced the target-size on average 10%. Slightly better figures (51%, 6.9% and 28%) were obtained with the CT-PET-based method. Even better results were obtained in the phantom study for both the CT-only-method (57%, 68% and 43%) and the CT-PETbased method (61%, 74% and 52). We conclude that using anatomical information of CT for motion correction of cardiac PET images, both respiratory and pulsatile motions can be corrected with good accuracy. 3
doi:10.1097/mnm.0000000000000539 pmid:27258990 fatcat:2au4brxd7veqpn4pc5y5qzol74