The effects of object size, attenuation, scatter, and random coincidences on signal to noise ratio in simulations of time-of-flight positron emission tomography

Author

Harrison, Robert L. ; Gillispie, Steven B. ; Alessio, Adam M. ; Kinahan, Paul E. ; Lewellen, Thomas K.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Radiol., Washington Univ., USA

Volume

4

fYear

2005

fDate

23-29 Oct. 2005

Abstract

Time-of-flight (TOF) positron emission tomography (PET) can improve signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) relative to conventional PET by improving coincidence localization and reducing random coincidences. Previous work showed that good TOF resolution can dramatically improve SNR in the absence of attenuation. This paper examines the effect of attenuation, scatter and randoms coincidences on SNR in TOF. The SimSET program was modified to generate random events and used to simulate multiple realizations of cylindrical phantoms, adding attenuation, scatter and randoms one-by-one. Improving TOF resolution generally improved SNR, but the improvement over conventional tomography was not well predicted by a widely used model.

Keywords

image resolution; medical image processing; phantoms; positron emission tomography; time of flight spectroscopy; SimSET program; TOF resolution; attenuation effects; coincidence localization; cylindrical phantoms; object size effects; random coincidences effects; scatter effects; signal-to-noise ratio; time-of-flight positron emission tomography; Attenuation; Computational modeling; Discrete event simulation; Monte Carlo methods; Positron emission tomography; Radiology; Random number generation; Scattering; Signal to noise ratio; Timing;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Nuclear Science Symposium Conference Record, 2005 IEEE

ISSN

1095-7863

Print_ISBN

0-7803-9221-3

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/NSSMIC.2005.1596703

Filename

1596703