New approach for simultaneous respiratory and cardiac motion correction in cardiac PET (NAMC-CPET)

Abstract

Respiratory and cardiac motions are inevitable during the relatively long acquisition time of cardiac positron emission tomography (PET) scan. The correction of the resultant motion blur has become a significant challenge due to recent spatial resolution improvement of the PET scanners. The majority of current motion compensation algorithms are based on gating as a primary step. A new approach based on temporal basis functions is developed to correct respiratory and cardiac motion simultaneously in cardiac PET within the normal scanning time (NAMC-CPET). Simulation and experimental studies are conducted to evaluate and validate the final outputs in comparison to the existing gating methods. A dynamic digital phantom is used to simulate realistic human thorax and abdomen with respiratory and cardiac motions. GATE simulation was run at China National Grid Center to obtain realistic PET data in a reasonable time. Moreover, Tibet minipig experiments were conducted using a preclinical small animal PET scanner developed at HUST to validate the performance of the NAMC-CPET in real data. The results reveal that NAMC-CPET outperformed the existing gating methods (respiratory, cardiac, and dual) in cardiac imaging in term of noise reduction and contrast, especially in short acquisition duration. NAMC-CPET obtained better results in the conducted experiments in terms of contrast and the visibility of the heart. In contrast, the dual gating failed to obtain valuable images in the normal scan time due to the low 18F-FDG uptake. NAMC-CPET is advantageous in the low-statistic situation. The results are promising with great potential implications in cardiac PET imaging in terms of the radioactive dose and scan time reduction.