Deep reconstruction model for dynamic PET images

PLoS One. 2017 Sep 21;12(9):e0184667. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0184667. eCollection 2017.

Abstract

Accurate and robust tomographic reconstruction from dynamic positron emission tomography (PET) acquired data is a difficult problem. Conventional methods, such as the maximum likelihood expectation maximization (MLEM) algorithm for reconstructing the activity distribution-based on individual frames, may lead to inaccurate results due to the checkerboard effect and limitation of photon counts. In this paper, we propose a stacked sparse auto-encoder based reconstruction framework for dynamic PET imaging. The dynamic reconstruction problem is formulated in a deep learning representation, where the encoding layers extract the prototype features, such as edges, so that, in the decoding layers, the reconstructed results are obtained through a combination of those features. The qualitative and quantitative results of the procedure, including the data based on a Monte Carlo simulation and real patient data demonstrates the effectiveness of our method.

MeSH terms

  • Brain / diagnostic imaging
  • Brain / metabolism
  • Computer Simulation
  • Humans
  • Machine Learning*
  • Models, Anatomic
  • Models, Neurological
  • Monte Carlo Method
  • Phantoms, Imaging
  • Positron-Emission Tomography / instrumentation
  • Positron-Emission Tomography / methods*
  • Whole Body Imaging / instrumentation
  • Whole Body Imaging / methods

Grants and funding

This work is supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No: 61525106, 61427807), by National Key Technology Research and Development Program of China (No: 2016YFC1300302), by Zhejiang Medical Science and Technology Projects (201128375, 20143675), and by Hangzhou Huazheng Medical Equipment Co. Ltd. (491030-121602).