Analytic reconstruction of the attenuation from 3D time-of-flight PET data

In positron emission tomography (PET), an accurate quantitative reconstruction of the tracer distribution requires taking into account the attenuation of the photons by the tissues. Recently, it was proven that the attenuation sinogram is determined, up to a constant multiplicative factor, by the 2D TOF data and that it can be calculated using an efficient analytic algorithm. This paper extends this work to 3D TOF PET. Iterative algorithms dealing with the same problem are presented in the other cited papers.