Characterization of a whole body imaging technique for PET

An investigation of rapid whole-body PET (positron emission tomography) scanning was performed with a view towards its eventual use in screening for metastatic lesions with ¹⁸F-fluoride ion or ¹⁸F-fluorodeoxyglucose. Longitudinal images of the body were formed using three techniques. Simple 2-D projection images were formed by resorting the sinogram data. The images were created for a set of angles covering a full 180° to facilitate viewing in a cine format. The effects of summing over a number of angles per view and filtering to reduce noise were investigated. Limited-angle backprojection images were formed using a small range of angles and no reconstruction filter. The resulting volume was then sliced coronally to give planar images as a function of depth. Coronal images were also obtained after reconstruction with a standard filtered backprojection technique, but with no attenuation correction. All three processes provided surprisingly good images of diagnostic quality, which were obtainable in practical scan times