Parallel algorithm and hybrid regularization for dynamic PET reconstruction

To improve the estimation at the voxel level in dynamic Positron Emission Tomography (PET) imaging, we propose to develop a convex optimization approach based on a recently proposed parallel proximal method (PPXA). This class of algorithms was successfully employed for 2D deconvolution in the presence of Poisson noise and it is extended here to (dynamic) space + time PET image reconstruction. Hybrid regularization defined as a sum of a total variation and a sparsity measure is considered in this paper. The total variation is applied to each temporal-frame and a wavelet regularization is considered for the space+time data. Total variation allows us to smooth the wavelet artifacts introduced when the wavelet regularization is used alone. The proposed algorithm was evaluated on simulated dynamic fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) brain data and compared with a regularized Expectation Maximization (EM) reconstruction. From the reconstructed dynamic images, parametric maps of the cerebral metabolic rate of glucose (CMRglu) were computed. Our approach shows a better reconstruction at the voxel level.