Book Description
Two different approaches are used at present to reconstruct from 3D coincidence data in PET. We refer to these approaches as the single-slice rebinning approach and the fully-3D approach. The single-slice rebinning approach involves geometrical approximations, but it requires the least possible amount of computation. Fully-3D reconstruction algorithms, both iterative and non-iterative, do not make such approximations, but require much more computation. Multi-slice rebinning with axial filtering is a new approach which attempts to achieve the geometrical accuracy of the fully-3D approach with the simplicity and modest amount of computation of the single-slice rebinning approach. The first step (multi-slice rebinning) involves rebinning of coincidence lines into a stack of 2D sinograms, where multiple sinograms are incremented for each oblique coincidence line. This operation is followed by an axial filtering operation, either before or after slice-by-slice reconstruction, to reduce the blurring in the axial direction. Tests with simulated and experimental data indicate that the new method has better geometrical accuracy than single-slice rebinning, at the cost of only a modest increase in computation. 11 refs.
