Compensating respiratory motion in PET image reconstruction using 4D PET/CT

Abstract

Respiratory motion of the patient can cause image blur and inaccurate radioactivity quantification in PET imaging. Gated PET acquisition freezes the motion but suffers in image quality due to insufficient photon statistics. We present in this paper a novel approach that incorporates motion information into the reconstruction process and reconstruct the motion-free image with all data acquired. Computer simulation and phantom study showed good motion compensation capability of this algorithm, with no obvious motion artifacts visible on the reconstructed image