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Correction of head movement on PET studies: comparison of methods
Andrew J Montgomery1, Kris Thielemans, Mitul A Mehta
1CSC-MRC Cyclotron Unit, Imperial College, Hammersmith Hospital, London, UK. andrew.montgomery@imperial.ac.uk
Unlabelled:
Head movement presents a continuing problem in PET studies. Head restraint minimizes movement but is unreliable, resulting in the need to develop alternative strategies. These include frame-by-frame (FBF) realignment or use of motion tracking (MT) during the scan to realign PET acquisition data. Here we present a comparative analysis of these 2 methods of motion correction.
Methods:
Eight volunteers were examined at rest using (11)C-raclopride PET with the radioligand administered as a bolus followed by constant infusion to achieve steady state. Binding potential (BP) was estimated using the ratio method during 2 periods of the scan at steady state. Head movement was compensated by using coregistration between frames (FBF) and 3 methods using MT measurements of head position acquired with a commercially available optical tracking system.
Results:
All methods of realignment improved test-retest reliability and noise characteristics of the raw data, with important consequences for the power to detect small changes in radiotracer binding, and the potential to reduce false-positive and false-negative results. MT methods were superior to FBF realignment using coregistration on some indices.
Conclusion:
Such methods have considerable potential to improve the reliability of PET data with important implications for the numbers of volunteers required to test hypotheses.
