Synthetic positron emission tomography-computed tomography images for use in perceptual studies

To better understand fundamental issues, perception studies of the fusion display would best be performed with a panel of lesions of variable location, size, intensity, and background. There are compelling reasons to use synthetic images that contain artificial lesions for perception research. A consideration of how to obtain this panel of lesions is the nucleus of the present review. This article is a conjoint effort of 3 groups that have joined together to review results from work that they and others have performed. The techniques we review include (1) substitution of lesions into a preexisting image matrix (either using actual prior patient-derived lesions or mathematically modeled artificial lesions), (2) addition of images (either in the attenuation-corrected image space or at an earlier stage before image reconstruction), and (3) simulation of the entire patient image. A judicious combination of the techniques discussed in this review may represent the most efficient pathway of simulating statistically varied but realistic appearing lesions.