Correction of head movements in positron emission tomography using point source tracking system: a simulation study.

Area of Science:

• Medical Imaging
• Nuclear Medicine

Background:

• Head motion during brain positron emission tomography (PET) acquisitions introduces artifacts in reconstructed images.
• External optical motion-tracking systems are commonly used but can be cumbersome.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop an image-based motion correction technique for brain PET data.
• To correct post-acquisition data without relying on external motion-tracking systems.

Main Methods:

• Utilized GATE (Geant4 Application for Tomographic Emission) for PET brain scan simulations.
• Employed point sources mounted around the head to monitor head position during scan time frames.

Main Results:

• Quantified head motion in each frame by analyzing transformations in the image frame matrix.
• Achieved a fully corrected dataset through the developed image-based correction method.

Conclusions:

• Validated the accuracy of the motion correction method using various phantoms and motion types.
• Demonstrated the applicability of the technique for experimental brain PET studies.