4D-PET reconstruction using a spline-residue model with spatial and temporal roughness penalties

George P Ralli, Michael A Chappell, Daniel R McGowan, Ricky A Sharma, Geoff S Higgins, John D Fenwick
2018 Physics in Medicine and Biology  
4D reconstruction of dynamic positron emission tomography (dPET) data can improve the signalto-noise ratio in reconstructed image sequences by fitting smooth temporal functions to the voxel time-activity-curves (TACs) during the reconstruction, though the optimal choice of function remains an open question. We propose a spline-residue model, which describes TACs as weighted sums of convolutions of the arterial input function with cubic B-spline basis functions. Convolution with the input
more » ... n constrains the spline-residue model at early time-points, potentially enhancing noise suppression in early time-frames, while still allowing a wide range of TAC descriptions over the entire imaged time-course, thus limiting bias. Spline-residue based 4D-reconstruction is compared to that of a conventional (non-4D) maximum a posteriori (MAP) algorithm, and to 4D-reconstructions based on adaptive-knot cubic B-splines, the spectral model and an irreversible two-tissue compartment ('2C3K') model. 4D reconstructions were carried out using a nested-MAP algorithm including spatial and temporal roughness penalties. The algorithms were tested using Monte-Carlo simulated scanner data, generated for a digital thoracic phantom with uptake kinetics based on a dynamic [ 18 F]-iD George P Ralli https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0119-050X iD Michael A Chappell https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1802-4214 iD Daniel R McGowan https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6880-5687 iD Ricky A Sharma https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4873-9918 iD Geoff S Higgins https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3072-909X Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. Fluromisonidazole scan of a non-small cell lung cancer patient. For every algorithm, parametric maps were calculated by fitting each voxel TAC within a sub-region of the reconstructed images with the 2C3K model. Compared to conventional MAP reconstruction, spline-residue-based 4D reconstruction achieved >50% improvements for five of the eight combinations of the four kinetics parameters for which parametric maps were created with the bias and noise measures used to analyse them, and produced better results for 5/8 combinations than any of the other reconstruction algorithms studied, while spectral model-based 4D reconstruction produced the best results for 2/8. 2C3K model-based 4D reconstruction generated the most biased parametric maps. Inclusion of a temporal roughness penalty function improved the performance of 4D reconstruction based on the cubic B-spline, spectral and spline-residue models.
doi:10.1088/1361-6560/aabb62 pmid:29616663 pmcid:PMC5983307 fatcat:4n4v4uxzyvho5acf2ouxrr35gi