Positron Emission Computed Tomographs and Image Reconstruction Methods

PET 장치와 화상 재구성법

This paper reviews recent major activities on instrumentation and methodology of PET. The performance of the PET instrumentation can be expressed by four physical characteristics, 1) spatial resolution, 2) coincidence resolving time, 3) energy resolution, and 4) detection efficiency. The physical and technical aspects of PET systems are briefly discussed along with these characteristics. Toward high resolution PET the recent trend has been to design multiple rings of densely packed detector arrays with scintillators. In order to satisfy the sampling requirement in reconstruction, continuous detector units has been developed. Iterative image reconstruction algorithms have received considerable attention for improvement of both the sampling requirement and image quality toward the stationary PET. Better resolving time improves the maximum true coincidence rate, which is also increased with more detectors placed in coincidence with each other. It suggests that volume PET is promising for enhancement of detection efficiency. The scattered coincidence event rate may be reduced by using detectors with better energy resolution. The use of interplane septa, however, takes over improvement of energy resolution in 2D PET. Energy resolution becomes an important factor for image quality under the condition of septa removal such as volume PET. Toward full utilization of emitting photons, 3D reconstruction incorporating oblique rays has been studied, and volume reconstruction algorithms have been developed. Practical volume PET systems impose heavy burden not only to detector sets and coincidence circuits, but also to computers in the memory requirements and the data processing. In conclusion, there have been many ingenious methods in development of PET instrumentation, which are based on unique capability of PET. They will be expected to overcome technical limitations, and to approach the fundamental limits.